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MISS LUDINGTON’S SISTER 



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LUDINGTON’S SISTER 

A 

ROMANCE OF IMMORTALITY 


EDWARD BELLAMY 

Author of ** Six to One: A N‘a7itucket IdyP' ; Dr» HeidejihoJf's 
Process and Short Stories 



BOSTON : 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 

1884 






Copyright, 1S84 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 


All rights reserved 


Press of Rockwell and Churchill, 
39 Arch Street, Boston. 


MISS LUDINGTON’S SISTER. 


CHAPTER I. 

'"T^HE happiness of some lives is distributed 
pretty evenly over the whole stretch from 
the cradle to the grave, while that of others 
comes all at once, glorifying some particular 
epoch and leaving the rest in shadow. During 
one, five, or ten blithe years, as the case may 
be, all the springs of life send up sweet waters ; 
joy is in the very air we breathe; happiness 
seems our native element. During this period 
we know what is the zest of living, as com- 
pared with the mere endurance of existence, 
which is, perhaps, the most we have attained to 
before or since. With men this culminating 
epoch comes often in manhood, or even at 


2 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


maturity, especially with men of arduous and 
successful careers. But with women it comes 
most frequently perhaps in girlhood and young 
womanhood. Particularly is this wont to be 
the fact with women who do not marry, and with 
whom, as the years glide on, life becomes 
lonelier and its interests fewer. 

By the time Miss Ida Ludington was twenty- 
five years old she recognized that she had done 
with happiness, and that the pale pleasures of 
memory were all which remained to her. 

It was not so much the mere fact that her 
youth was past, saddening though that might 
be, which had so embittered her life, but the 
peculiarly cruel manner in which it had been 
taken from her. 

The Ludingtons were one of the old families 
of Hilton, a little farming village among the 
hills of Massachusetts. They were not rich, but 
were well-to-do, lived in the largest house in 
the place, and were regarded somewhat as local 
magnates. Miss Ludington’s childhood had 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


3 


been an exceptionally happy one, and as a girl 
she had been the belle of the village. Her 
beauty, together with her social position and 
amiability of disposition, made her the idol of 
the young men, the recognized leader of the 
girls, and the animating and central figure in 
the social life of the place. 

She was about twenty years old, at the 
height of her beauty and in the full tide of 
youthful enjoyment, when she fell ill of a dread- 
ful disease, and for a long time lay between life 
and death. Or, to state the case more accu- 
rately, the girl did die, — it was a sad and faded 
woman who rose from that bed of sickiiess. 

The ravages of disease had not left a vestige 
of her beauty, — it was hopelessly gone. The 
luxuriant, shining hair had fallen out and been 
replaced by a scanty growth of washed-out hue ; 
the lips, but yesterday so full, and red, and 
tempting, were thin, and drawn, and colorless, 
and the rose-leaf complexion had given place 
to an aspect so cruelly pitted, seamed, and 


4 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


scarred that even friends did not recognize 
her. 

The fading of youth is always a melancholy 
experience with women ; but in most cases the 
process is so gradual as to temper the poig- 
nancy of regret, and perhaps often to prevent 
its being experienced at all except as a vague 
sentiment. 

But in Miss Ludington’s case the transition 
had been piteously sharp and abrupt. 

With others, ere youth is fully past its charms 
are well-nigh forgotten in the engrossments of 
later years ; but with her there had been nothing 
to temper the bitterness of her loss. 

During the long period of invalidism which 
followed her sickness her only solace was 
a miniature of herself, at the age of seven- 
teen, painted on ivory, the daguerreotype 
process not having come into use at this time, 
which was toward the close of the third decade 
of the present century. 

Over this picture she brooded hours together 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


5 


when no one was near, studying the bonny, 
gladsome face through blinding tears, and 
sometimes murmuring incoherent words of 
tenderness. 

Her young friends occasionally came to sit 
with her, by way of enlivening the weary hours 
of an invalid’s day. At such times she would 
listen with patient indifference while they 
sought to interest her with current local gossip, 
and as soon as possible would turn the conver- 
sation back to the old happy days before her 
sickness. On this topic she was never weary of 
talking, but it was impossible to induce her to 
take any interest in the present. 

She had caused a locket to be made, to 
contain the ivory miniature of herself as a 
girl, and always wore it on her bosom. 

In no w^ay could her visitors give her more 
pleasure than by asking to see this picture, and 
expressing their admiration of it. Then her poor, 
disfigured face would look actually happy, and 
she would exclaim, ‘‘Was she not beautiful?” 


6 


MISS LUDINGTON’S SISTER, 


I do not think it flattered her, do you? ” and 
with other similar expressions indicate her 
sympathy with the admiration expressed. The 
absence of anything like self-consciousness 
in the delight she took in these tributes to 
the charms of her girlish self was pathetic in 
its completeness. It was indeed not as herself, 
but as another, that she thought of this fair girl, 
who had vanished from the earth, leaving a 
picture as her sole memento. How, indeed, 
could it be otherwise when she looked from the 
picture to the looking-glass, and contrasted the 
images? She mourned for her girlish self, 
which had been so cruelly effaced from the 
world of life, as for a person, near and pre- 
cious to her beyond the power of words to 
express, who had died. 

From the time that she had first risen from 
the sick-bed, where she had suffered so sad a 
transformation, nothing could induce her to 
put on the brightly-colored gowns, be-ribboned, 
and ruffled, and gayly trimmed, which she had 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


7 


worn as a girl ; and as soon as she was able she 
carefully folded and put them away in laven- 
der, like relics of the dead. For herself, she 
dressed henceforth in drab or black. 

For three or four years she remained more 
or less an invalid. At the end of that time 
she regained a fair measure of health, although 
she seemed not likely ever to be strong. 

In the meanwhile her school-mates and friends 
had pretty much all married, or been given in 
marriage. She was a stranger to the new set of 
young people which had come on the stage since 
her day, while her former companions lived in a 
world of new interests, with which she had 
nothing in common. Society, in reorganizing 
itself, had left her on the outside. The present 
had moved on, leaving her behind with the 
past. She asked nothing better. If she was 
nothing to the present, the present was still less 
to her. As to society, her sensitiveness to 
the unpleasant impression made by her personal 
appearance rendered social gatherings dis- 


8 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


tasteful to her, and she wore a heavy veil when 
she went to church. 

She was an only child. Her mother had 
long been dead, and .when about this time her 
father died she was left without near kin. 
With no ties of contemporary interest to hold 
her to the present she fell more and more 
under the influence of the habit of retro- 
spection. 

The only brightness or color which life could 
ever have for her lay behind in the girlhood 
which had ended but yesterday, and was yet 
so completely ended. She found her only 
happiness in the recollections of that period 
which she retained. These were the only 
goods she prized, and it was the grief of her 
life that, while she had strong boxes for her 
money, and locks and keys for her silver and 
her linen, there was no device whereby she 
could protect her store of memories from the 
slow wasting of forgetfulness. 

She lived with a servant quite alone in the 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


9 


old Ludington homestead, which it was her 
absorbing care to keep in precisely the same 
condition, even to the arrangement of the 
furniture, in which it had always been. 

If she could have insured the same perma- 
nence in the village of Hilton, outside the 
homestead enclosure, she would have been 
spared the cause of her keenest unhappiness. 
For the hand of change was making havoc 
with the village : the railroad had come, shops 
had been built, and stores and new houses 
were going up on every side, and the beautiful 
hamlet, with its score or two of old-fashioned 
dwellings, which had been the scene of her 
girlhood, was in a fair way to be transformed 
into a vile manufacturing village. 

Miss Ludington, to whom every stick and 
stone of the place was dear, could not walk 
abroad without missing some ancient landmark 
removed since she had passed that way before, 
perhaps a tree felled, some meadow, that had 
been a play-ground of her childhood, dug up 


lO 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


for building-lots, or a row of brick tenements 
going up on the site of a sacred grove. 

Her neighbors generally had succumbed to 
the rage for improvement, as they called it. 
There was a general remodelling and modern- 
izing of houses, and, where nothing more 
expensive could be afforded, the paint-brush 
wrought its cheap metamorphosis. " You 
wouldn’t know Hilton was^ the same place,” 
was the complacent verdict of her neighbors, to 
which Miss Ludington sorrowfully assented. 

It would be hard to describe her impotent 
wrath, her sense of outrage and irreparable loss, 
as one by one these changes effaced some 
souvenir of her .early life. The past was once 
dead already; they were killing it a second 
time. Her feelings at length became so in- 
tolerable that she kept her house, pretty much 
ceasing to walk abroad. 

At this period, when she was between thirty 
and thirty-five years old, a distant relative left 
her a large fortune. She had been well-to- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


II 


do before, but now she was very rich. As 
her expenses had never exceeded a few hun- 
dred dollars a year, which had procured her 
everything she needed, it would be hard to 
imagine a person with less apparent use for 
a great deal of money. And yet no young 
rake, in the heyday of youth and the riot 
of hot blood, could have been more over- 
joyed at the falling to him of a fortune than 
was this sad-faced old maid. She became 
smiling and animated. She no longer kept at 
home, but walked abroad. Her step was quick 
and strong ; she looked on at the tree-choppers, 
the builders, and the painters, at their nefarious 
work, no more in helpless grief and indigna- 
tion, but with an unmistakable expression 
of triumph. 

Presently surveyors appeared in the village, 
taking exact and careful measurements of the 
single broad and grassy street which formed the 
older part of it. Miss Ludington was closeted 
with a builder and engrossed with estimates. 


12 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


The next year she left Hilton to the mercy of 
the vandals, and never returned. 

But it was to another Hilton that she went. 

The fortune she had inherited had enabled her 
to carry out a design which had been a day-dream 
with her ever since the transformation of the 
village had begun. Among the pieces of prop- 
erty left her was a large farm on Long Island, 
several miles out of the city of Brooklyn. Here 
she had rebuilt the Hilton of her girlhood, in 
fac-simile, with every change restored, every 
landmark replaced. In the midst of this silent 
village she had built for her residence an exact 
duplicate of the Ludington homestead, situated 
in respect to the rest of the village precisely as 
the original was situated in the real Hilton. 

The astonishment of the surveyors and build- 
ers at the character of the work required of 
them was probably great, and their bills cer- 
tainly were, though Miss Ludington would not 
have grudged the money had they been ten 
times greater. However, seeing that the part of 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


13 


the village duplicated consisted of but one broad 
maple-planted street, with not over thirty houses, 
mostly a story and a half, and that none of the 
buildings except the school-house, the little 
meeting-house and the homestead, were fin- 
ished inside, the outlay was not greater than 
an elaborate plan of landscape gardening would 
have involved. 

The furniture and fittings of the Massachu- 
setts homestead, to the least detail, had been 
used to fit up its Long Island duplicate, and 
when all was complete and Miss Ludington 
had settled down to house-keeping, she felt 
more at home than in ten years past. 

True, the village which she had restored was 
empty; but it was not more empty than the 
other Hilton had been to her these many years, 
since her old school-mates had been metamor- 
phosed into staid fathers and mothers. These 
respectable persons were not the school-mates 
and’ friends of her girlhood, and with no hard 
feelings toward them, she had still rather re- 


14 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


sented seeing them about, as tending to blur 
her recollections of their former selves, in whom 
alone she was interested. 

That her new Long Island neighbors consid- 
ered her mildly insane was to her the lea,st 
of all concerns. The only neighbors she 
cared about were the shadowy forms which 
peopled the village she had rescued from obliv- 
ion, whose faces she fancied smiling gratefully 
at her from the windows of the homes she had 
restored to them. 

For she had a notion that the spirits of her 
old neighbors, long dead, had found out this 
resurrected Hilton, and were grateful for the 
opportunity to revisit the unaltered scenes of 
their passion. If she had grieved over the re- 
* moval of the old landmarks and the change in 
the appearance of the village, how much more 
hopelessly must they have grieved, if indeed the 
dead revisit earth ! The living, if their homes 
are broken up, can make them new ones, which, 
after a fashion, will serve the purpose ; but the 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 1 5 

dead cannot. They are thenceforth homeless 
and desolate. 

No sense of having benefited living persons 
would have afforded Miss Ludington the 
pleasure she took in feeling that, by rebuilding 
ancient Hilton, she had restored homes to these 
homeless ones. 

But of all this fabric of the past which she 
had resurrected, the central figure was the 
school-girl Ida Ludington. The restored vil- 
lage was the mausoleum of her youth. 

Over the great old-fashioned fireplace, in the 
sitting-room of the homestead which she had 
rebuilt in the midst of the village, she had hung 
a portrait in oil, by the first portrait-painter 
then in the country. It was an enlarged copy 
of the little likeness on ivory which had for- 
merly been so great a solace to her. 

The portrait was executed with extremely 
life-like effect, and was fondly believed by Miss 
Ludington to be a more accurate likeness in 
some particulars than the ivory picture itself. 


1 6 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

It represented a very beautiful girl of seven- 
teen or eighteen, although already possessing 
the ripened charms of a woman. She was 
dressed in white, with a low bodice, her luxuri- 
ant golden hair, of a rare sheen and fineness, 
falling upon beautifully moulded shoulders. 
The complexion was of a purity that needed the 
faint tinge of pink in the cheeks to relieve it of 
a suspicion of pallor. The eyes were of the 
deepest, tenderest violet, full of the light of 
youth, and the lips were smiling. 

It was, indeed, no wonder that Miss Luding- 
ton had mourned the vanishing from earth of 
this delectable maiden with exceeding bitter- 
ness, or that her heart yet yearned after her 
with an aching tenderness across the gulf of 
years. 

How bright, how vivid, how glowing had 
been the life of that beautiful girl ! How real 
as compared with her own faint and faded per- 
sonality, which, indeed, had shone these many 
years only by the light reflected from that 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


17 


young face ! And yet that life, in its strength 
and brightness, had vanished like an exhalation, 
and its elements might no more be recombined 
than the hues of yesterday’s dawn. 

Miss Ludington had hung the portraits of 
her father and mother with immortelles, but 
the frame of the girl’s picture she had wound 
with deepest crape. 

Her father and mother she did not mourn 
as one without hope, believing that she 
should see them some day in another world ; 
but from the death of change which the girl 
had died no Messiah had ever promised any 
resurrection ^ 


i8 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


CHAPTER II. 

HE solitude in which Miss Ludington 



lived had become, through habit, so en- 
deared to her that when, a few years after she 
had been settled in her ghostly village, a cousin 


died in poverty, bequeathing to her with his 


last breath a motherless infant boy, it was 
with great reluctance that she accepted the 
charge. She would have willingly assumed the 
support of the child, but if it had been possible 
would have greatly preferred providing for him 
elsewhere to bringing him home with her. 
This, however, was impracticable, and so there 
came to be a baby in the old maid's house. 

Little Paul De Riemer was two years old 
when he was brought to live with Miss Luding- 
ton, — a beautiful child, with loving ways, and 
deep, dark, thoughtful eyes. When he was first 
taken into the sitting-room, the picture of the 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


19 


smiling girl over the fireplace instantly attracted 
his gaze, and, putting out his arms, he cooed to 
it. This completed the conquest of Miss Lud- 
ington, whose womanly heart had gone out to 
the winsome child at first sight. 

As the boy grew older his first rational 
questions were about the pretty lady in the 
picture, and he was never so happy as when 
Miss Ludington took him upon her knee and 
told him stories about her for hours together. 

These stories she always related in the third 
person, for it would only puzzle and grieve the 
child to intimate to him that there was anything 
in common between the radiant girl he had 
been taught to call Ida and the withered 
woman whom he called Aunty. What, indeed, 
had they in common but their name? and it 
had been so long since any one had called her 
Ida, that Miss Ludington scarcely felt that the 
name belonged to her present self at all. 

In their daily walks about the village she 
would tell the little boy endless stories about 


20 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


incidents which had befallen Ida at this spot or 
that. She was never weary of telling, or he of 
listening to, these tales, and it was wonderful 
how the artless sympathy of the child comforted 
the lone woman. 

One day, when he was eight years old, 
finding himself alone in the sitting-room, the 
lad, after contemplating Ida's picture for a 
long time, piled one chair on another, and, 
climbing upon the structure, put up his 
chubby lips to the painted lips of the portrait 
and kissed them with right good-will. Just 
then Miss Ludington came in, and saw what 
he was doing. Seizing him in her arms, she 
cried over him and kissed him till he was 
thoroughly frightened. 

A year or two later, on his announcing one 
day his intention to marry Ida when he grew 
up. Miss Ludington explained to him that she 
was dead. He was quite overcome with grief 
at this intelligence, and for a long time refused 
to be comforted. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


21 


And so it was, that never straying beyond 
the confines of the eerie village, and having 
no companion but Miss Ludington, the boy 
fell scarcely less than she under the influence 
of the beautiful girl who was the presiding 
genius of the place. 

As he grew older, far from losing its charm, 
Ida's picture laid upon him a new spell. Her 
violet eyes lighted his first love-dreams. She 
became his ideal of feminine loveliness, drawing 
to herself, as the sun draws mist, all the senti- 
ment and dawning passion of the youth. In a 
word, he fell in love with her. 

Of course he knew now who she had been. 
Long before, as soon as he was old enough to 
understand it, this had been explained to him. 
But though he was well aware that neither on 
earth nor in heaven, nor anywhere in the uni- 
verse, did she any more exist, that knowledge 
was quite without effect upon the devotion 
which she had inspired. The matter, indeed, 
presented itself in a very simple way to his 


22 


MISS LUDINGTON’S SISTER. 


mind. "If I had never seen her picture/’ he 
said one day to Miss Ludington, " I should 
never have known that my love was dead, and 
I should have gone seeking her through all the 
worlds and wondering what was the reason I 
could not find her.’’ 

Miss Ludington was over sixty years of age 
and Paul was twenty-two when he finished his 
course at college. She had naturally supposed 
that, on going out into the world, mixing with 
young men and meeting young women, he 
would outgrow his romantic fancy concerning 
Ida ; but the event was very different. As year 
after year he returned home to spend his vaca- 
tions, it was evident that his visionary passion 
was strengthening rather than losing its hold 
upon him. 

But the strangest thing of all was the very 
peculiar manner in which, during the last 
vacation preceding his graduation, he began 
to allude to Ida in his conversations with Miss 
Ludington. It was, indeed, so peculiar that 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


23 


when, after his return to college, she recalled 
the impression left upon her mind, she was 
constrained to think that she had, somehow, 
totally misunderstood him ; for he had certainly 
seemed to talk as if Ida, instead of being that 
most utterly, pathetically dead of all dead 
things, — the past self of a living person, — 
were possibly not dead at all; as if, in fact, 
she might have a spiritual existence, like that 
ascribed to the souls of those other dead whose 
bodies are laid in the grave. 

Decidedly, she must have misunderstood him. 

Some months later, on one of the last days 
of June, he graduated. Miss Ludington would 
have attended the graduation exercises but for 
the fact that her long seclusion from society 
made the idea of going away from home and 
mingling with strangers ' intolerable. She had 
expected him home the morning after his 
graduation. When, however, she came down- 
stairs, expecting to greet him at the breakfast 
table, she found instead a letter from him, which, 


24 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


to her further astonishment, consisted of several 
closely written sheets. What could have 
possessed him to write her this laborious letter 
on the very day of his return? 

The letter began by telling her that he had 
accepted an invitation from a class-mate, and 
should not be home for a couple of days. ”But 
this is only an excuse,'’ he went on ; " the true 
reason that I do not at once return is that you 
may have a day or two to think over the 
contents of this letter before you see me ; for 
what I have to say will seem very startling to 
you at first. I was trying to prepare you for it 
when I talked, as you evidently thought, so 
strangely, about Ida, the last time I was at 
home ; but you were only mystified, and I was 
not ready to explain. A certain timidity held 
me back. It was so great a matter that I was 
afraid to broach it by word of mouth lest I 
might fail to put it in just the best way before 
your mind, and its strangeness might terrify you 
before you could be led to consider its reason- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


25 


ableness. But, now that I am coming home to 
stay, I should not be able to keep It from you, 
and it has seemed to me better to write you in 
this way, so that you may have time fully to 
debate the matter with your own heart before 
you see me. Do you remember the last evening 
that I was at home, my asking you if you did 
not sometimes have a sense of Ida’s presence? 
You looked at me as if you thought I were 
losing my wits. What did I mean, you asked, 
by speaking of her as a living person? But I 
was not ready to speak, and I put you off. 

” I am going to answer your question now. 
I am going to tell you how and why I believe 
that she is neither lost nor dead, but a living and 
immortal spirit. For this, nothing less than 
this, is my absolute assurance, the conviction 
which I ask you to share. 

" But stop, let us go back. Let us assume 
nothing. Let us reason it all out carefully 
from the beginning. Let me forget that I am 
her lover. Let me be stiff, and slow, and formal 


26 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


as a logician, while I prove that my darling 
lives forever. And you, follow me carefully, to 
see if I slip. Forget what ineflable thing she is 
to you ; forget what it is to you that she lives. 
Do not let your eyes fill ; do not let your brain 
swim. It would be madness to believe it if it 
is not true. Listen, then : — 

”You know that men speak of human beings, 
taken singly, as individuals. It is taken for 
granted in the common speech that the indi- 
vidual is the unit of humanity, not to be sub- 
divided. That is, indeed, what the etymology 
of the word means. Nevertheless, the slightest 
reflection will cause any one to see that this 
assumption is a most mistaken one. The indi- 
vidual is no more the unit of humanity than is 
the tribe or family ; but, like them, is a collec- 
tive noun, and stands for a number of distinct 
persons, related one to another in a particular 
way, and having certain features of resem- 
blance. The persons composing a family are 
related both collaterally and by succession or 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


27 


descent, while the persons composing an indi- 
vidual are related by succession only. They 
are called infancy, childhood, youth, man- 
hood, maturity, age, and dotage. 

” These persons are very unlike one another. 
Striking physical, mental, and moral differences 
exist between them. Infancy and childhood 
are incomprehensible to manhood, and manhood 
not less so to them. The youth looks forward 
with disgust to the old age which is to follow 
him, and the old man has far more in common 
with other old men, his own conternporaries, 
than with the youth who preceded him. How 
frequently do we see the youth vicious and de- 
praved, and the man who follows him upright 
and virtuous, hating iniquity ! How often, on 
the other hand, is a pure and innocent girlhood 
succeeded by a dissolute and shameless woman- 
hood ! In many cases age looks back upon 
youth with inexpressible longing and tenderness, 
and quite as often with shame and remorse ; but 
in all cases with the same consciousness of pro- 


28 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


found contrast, and of a great gulf fixed be- 
tween. 

” If the series of persons which constitutes an 
individual could by any magic be brought to- 
gether and these persons confronted with one 
another, in how many cases would the result be 
mutual misunderstanding, disgust, and even ani- 
mosity? Suppose, for instance, that Saul, the 
persecutor of the disciples of Jesus, who held 
the garments of them that stoned Stephen, 
should be confronted with his later self, Paul 
the apostle, would there not be reason to antici- 
pate a stormy interview? For there is no more 
ground to suppose that Saul would be con- 
verted to Paul’s view than the reverse. Each 
was fully persuaded in his own mind as to what 
he did. 

" But for the fact that each one of the persons 
who together constitute an individual is well 
off the field before his successor comes upon it, 
we should not infrequently see the man collaring 
his own youth, handing him over to the author- 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


29 


ides, and preferring charges against him as a 
rascally fellow. 

" Not by any means are the successive persons 
of an individual always thus out of harmony 
with one another. In many, perhaps in a major- 
ity, of cases, the same general principles and 
ideals are recognized by the man which were 
adopted by the boy, and as much sympathy ex- 
ists between them as is possible in view of the 
different aspects which the world necessarily 
presents to youth and age. In such cases, no 
doubt, could the series of persons constitut- 
ing the individual be brought together, a scene 
of inexpressibly tender and intimate communion 
would ensue. 

'' But, though no magic may bring back our 
past selves to earth, may we not hope to meet 
them hereafter in some other world? Nay, must 
we not expect so to meet them if we believe in 
the immortality of human souls? For if our 
past selves, who were dead before we were alive, 
had no souls, then why suppose our present 


30 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


selves have any? Childhood, youth, and man- 
hood are the sweetest, the fairest, the noblest, the 
strongest of the persons who together constitute 
an individual. Are they soulless? Do they go 
down in darkness to oblivion while immortality 
is reserved for the withered soul of age? If we 
must believe that there is but one soul to all 
the persons of an individual it would be easier 
to believe that it belongs to youth or manhood, 
and that age is soulless. For if youth, strong- 
winged and ardent, full of fire and power, per- 
ish, leaving nothing behind save a few traces 
in the memory, how shall the flickering spirit of 
age have strength to survive the blast of death ? 

” The individual, in its career of seventy years, 
has not one body, but many, each wholly new. 
It is a commonplace of physiology that there is 
not a particle in the body to-day that was in it 
a few years ago. Shall we say that none of 
these bodies has a soul except the last, merely 
because the last decays mote suddenly than the 
others ? 


MISS LUDING TON'S SISTER. 


31 


” Or is it maintained that, although there is 
such utter diversity — physical, mental, moral — 
between infancy and manhood, youth and age, 
nevertheless, there is a certain essence com- 
mon to them all, and persisting unchanged 
through them all, and that this is the soul of 
the individual? But such an essence as should 
be the same in the babe and the man, the youth 
and the dotard, could be nothing more than a 
colorless abstraction, without distinctive quali- 
ties of any kind, — a mere principle of life like 
the fabled jelly protoplasm. Such a fancy re- 
duces the hope of immortality to an absurdity. 

" No ! no ! It is not any such grotesque or 
fragmentary immortality that God has given us. 
The Creator does not administer the universe 
on so niggardly a plan. Either there is no im- 
mortality for us which is intelligible or satisfy- 
ing, or childhood, youth, manhood, age, and all 
the other persons who make up an individual, 
live forever, and one day will meet and be to- 
gether in God’s eternal present ; and when the 


32 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


several souls of an individual are in harmony, 
no doubt He will perfect their felicity by join- 
ing them with a tie that shall be incomparably 
more tender and intimate than any earthly 
union ever dreamed of, constituting a life one 
yet manifold, — a harp of many strings, not 
struck successively as here on earth, but blend- 
ing in rich accord. 

"And now I beg you not to suppose that what 
I have tried to demonstrate is any hasty or ill- 
considered fancy. It was, indeed, at first but 
a dream with which the eyes of my sweet 
mistress inspired me, but from a dream it has 
grown into a belief, and in these last months 
into a conviction which I am sure nothing can 
shake. If you can share it the long mourning 
of your life will be at an end. For my own 
part I could never return to the old way of 
thinking without relapsing into unutterable 
despair. To do so would be virtually to give 
up faith in any immortality at all worth 
speaking of. For it is the long procession of 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


33 


our past selves, each with its own peculiar charm 
and incommunicable quality, slipping away from 
us as we pass on, and not the last self of all 
whom the grave entraps, which constitutes our 
chief contribution to mortality. What shall it 
avail for the grave to give up its handful if 
there be no immortality for this great multi- 
tude? God would not mock us thus. He has 
power not only over the grave, but over the 
viewless sepulchre of the past, and not one of 
the souls to which he has ever given life will 
be found wanting on the day when he makes 
up his jewels.*’ 


34 


mss LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


CHAPTER III. 

' I understand the impression which Paul's 
letter produced upon Miss Ludington 
imagine, in the days before the resurrection of 
the dead was preached, with what effect the 
convincing announcement of that doctrine 
would have fallen on the ears of one who had 
devoted her life to hopeless regrets over the 
ashes of a friend. 

And yet at no time have men been wholly 
without belief in some form of survival beyond 
the grave, and such a bereaved woman of 
antiquity would merely have received a more 
clear and positive assurance of what she had 
vaguely imagined before. But that there was 
any resurrection for her former self, — that the 
bright youth which she had so yearned after 
and lamented could anywhere still exist, in a 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


35 


mode however shadowy, Miss Ludington had 
never so much as dreamed. 

There might be immortality for all things 
else ; the birds and beasts, and even the lowest 
forms of life, might, under some form, in some 
world, live again ; but no priest had ever 
promised, nor any poet ever dreamed, that the 
title of a man's past selves to a life immortal 
is as indefeasible as that of his present self. 

It did not occur to her to doubt, to quibble, 
or to question, concerning the grounds of this 
great hope. From the first moment that she 
comprehended the purport of Paul's argument, 
she had accepted its conclusion as an indubita- 
ble revelation, and only wondered that she had 
never thought of it herself, so natural, so 
inevitable, so incontrovertible did it seem. 

And as a sun-burst in an instant transforms 
the sad fields of November into a bright and 
cheerful landscape, so did this revelation sud- 
denly illumine her sombre life. 

All day she went about the house and the 


36 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


village like one in a dream, smiling and weep- 
ing, and reading Paul’s letter over and over 
through eyes swimming with a joy unutter- 
able. 

In the afternoon, with tender, tremulous 
fingers she removed the crape from the frame 
of Ida’s picture, which it had draped for so 
many years. As she was performing this sym- 
bolic act it seemed to the old lady that the 
fair young face smiled upon her. " Forgive 
me ! ” she murmured. '' How could I ever have 
thought you dead ! ” 

It was not till evening that her servants 
reminded her that she had not eaten that day, 
and induced her to take food. 

The next afternoon Paul arrived. He had 
not been without very serious doubt as to the 
manner in which his argument for the immor- 
tality of past selves might impress Miss 
Ludington. A mild melancholy such as 
hers, sometimes becomes sweet by long indul- 
gence. She might not welcome opinions 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


37 


which revolutionized the fixed ideas of her life, 
even though they should promise a more 
cheerful philosophy. If she did not accept 
his belief, but found it chimerical and visionary, 
the effect of its announcement upon her mind 
could only be unpleasantly disturbing. It was, 
therefore, not without some anxiety that he 
approached the house. 

But his first glimpse of her, as she stood in 
the door awaiting him, dissipated his apprehen- 
sions. She wore a smiling face, and the deep 
black in which she always dressed was set off, 
for the first time since his knowledge of her, 
with a bit or two of bright color. 

She said not a word, but, taking him by the 
hand, led him into the sitting-room. 

That morning she had sent into Brooklyn for 
immortelles, and had spent the day in festoon- 
ing them about Ida's picture, so that now the 
sweet girlish face seemed smiling upon them 
out of a veritable bower of the white flowers of 
immortality. 


38 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


In the days that followed, Miss Ludington 
seemed a changed woman, such blitheness did 
the new faith she had found bring into her 
life. The conviction that the past was deathless, 
and her bright girlhood immortal, took all the 
melancholy out of retrospection. Nay, more 
than .that, it turned retrospection into anticipa- 
tion. She no longer viewed her youth-time 
through the pensive haze of memory, but the 
rosy mist of hope. She should see it again, 
for was it not safe with God? Her pains to 
guard the memory of the beautiful past, to 
preserve it from the second death of forgetful- 
ness, were now all needless ; she could trust it 
with God, to be restored to her in his eternal 
present, its lustre undimmed, and no trait miss- 

The laying aside of her mourning garb was 
but one indication of the change that had come 
over her. 

The whole household, from scullion to 
coachman, caught the inspiration of her brighter 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


39 


mood. The servants laughed aloud about the 
house. The children of the gardener, ever 
before banished to other parts of the grounds, 
played unrebuked in the sacred street of the 
silent village. 

As for Paul, since the revelation had come 
to him that the lady of his love was no mere 
dream of a life forever vanished, but was her- 
self alive forevermore, and that he should one 
day meet her, his love had assumed a color 
and a reality it had never possessed before. 
To him this meant all it would have meant to 
the lover of a material maiden, to be admitted 
to her immediate society. 

The sense of her presence in the village im- 
parted to the very air a fine quality of intoxi- 
cation. The place was her shrine, and he lived 
in it as in a sanctuary. 

It was not as if he should have to wait many 
years, till death, before he should see her. As 
soon as he gave place to the later self which 
was to succeed him, he should be with her. 


40 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


Already his boyish self had no doubt greeted 
her, and she had taken in her arms the baby 
Paul who had held his little arms out to her 
picture twenty years before. 

To be in love with the spirit of a girl, how- 
ever beautiful she might have been when on 
earth, would doubtless seem to most young 
men a very chimerical sort of passion ; but 
Paul, on the other hand, looked upon the 
species of attraction which they called love as 
scarcely more than a gross appetite. During 
his absence from home he had seen no woman’s 
face that for a moment rivalled Ida’s portrait. 
Shy and fastidious, he had found no pleasure 
in ladies’ society, and had listened to his class- 
mates’ talk of flirtations and conquests with 
secret contempt. What did they know of love ? 
What had their coarse and sensuous ideas in 
common with the rare and delicate passion to 
which his heart was dedicated, — a love asking 
and hoping for no reward, but sufficient to 
itself? 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


41 


He had spent but a few weeks at home when 
Miss Ludington began to talk quite seriously 
to him about studying for some profession. 
He was rather surprised at this, for he had sup- 
posed she would be glad to have him at home, 
for a while at least, now that he had done with 
college. To Paul, at this time, the idea of any 
pursuit which would take him away from the 
village was extremely distasteful, and he had no 
difficulty in finding excuses enough for procras- 
tinating a step for which, indeed, no sort of 
urgency could be pretended. 

He was to be Miss Ludington's heir, and any 
profession which he might adopt would be 
purely ornamental at most. 

Finding that he showed no disposition to 
consider a profession she dropped that point 
and proposed that he should take six months 
of foreign travel, as a sort of rounding off of 
his college course. To the advantages of this 
project he was, however, equally insensible. 
When she urged it on him he said, ”Why, 


42 


MISS HIDING TON^S SISTER. 


aunty, one would say you were anxious to get 
rid of me. Don’t we get on well together ? 
Have you taken a dislike to me ? I’m sure 
I’m very comfortable here. I don’t want to do 
anything different, or to go off anywhere. Why 
won’t you let me stay with you ? ” 

And so she had to let the matter drop. 

The truth was she had become anxious to 
get him away ; but it was on his account, not 
hers. 

In putting his room to rights one day since 
his return from college she had come upon a 
scrap of paper containing some verses addressed 
” To Ida.” Paul had rather a pretty knack at 
turning rhymes, and the tears came to Miss 
Ludington’s eyes as she read these lines. 
They were an attempt at a love sonnet,, throb- 
bing with passion, and yet so mystical in some 
of the allusions that nothing but her knowledge 
of Paul’s devotion to Ida would have given her 
a clew to his meaning. She was filled with 
apprehension as she considered the effect which 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


43 


this infatuation, if it should continue to gain 
strength, might have upon one of Paul's dreamy 
temperament and excessive ideality. That she 
had devoted her own lonely and useless life to 
the cult of the past did not greatly matter, 
although in the light of her present happier 
faith she saw and regretted her mistake; but 
as for permitting Paul’s life to be overshadowed 
by the same influence she could not consent 
to it. Something must be done to get him 
away from home, or at least to divert the cur- 
rent of his thoughts. The failure of her efforts 
to induce him to consider any scheme that 
involved his leaving the village threw her into 
a state of great uneasiness. 


44 


MISS LUDINGTON*S SISTER. 


CHAPTER IV. 

A T about this time it chanced that Miss 
^ ^ Ludington drove into Brooklyn one morn- 
ing to do some shopping. She was standing at 
a counter in a large store, examining goods, when 
she became aware that a lady standing at an- 
other counter was attentively regarding her. 
The lady in question was of about her own height 
and age, her hair being nearly white, like Miss 
Ludington's ; but it was evident from the hard 
lines of her face and her almost shabby dress 
that life had by no means gone so easily with 
her as with the lady she was regarding so 
curiously. 

As Miss Ludington looked up she smiled, 
and, crossing the store, held out her hand. 
"Ida Ludington! don’t you know me?” 
Miss Ludington scanned her face a moment^ 
and then, clasping her outstretched hand, ex- 


f/SS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


45 


claimed, delightedly, " Why, Sarah Cobb, where 
did you come from ? ’’ and for the next quarter 
of an hour the two ladies, quite oblivious of the 
clerks who were waiting on them, and the cus- 
tomers who were jostling them, stood absorbed 
in the most animated conversation. They had 
been school-girls together in Hilton forty-five 
years before, and, not having met since Miss 
Ludington’s removal from the village, had nat- 
urally a great deal to say. 

” It is thirty years since I have seen any one 
from Hilton,” said Miss Ludington at last, " and 
I’m not going to let you escape me. You must 
come out with me to my house and stay over- 
night, and we will talk old times over. I would 
not have missed you for anything.” 

Sarah Cobb, who had said that her name was 
now Mrs. Slater, and that she lived in New York, 
having removed there from Hilton only a few 
years previous, seemed nothing loath to accept 
her friend’s invitation, and it was arranged that 
Miss Ludington should send her carriage to 


46 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SI ST T. 


meet her at one of the Brooklyn ferries the 
day following. Miss Ludington wanted to send 
the carriage to Mrs. Slater's residence in New 
York, but the latter said that it would be quite 
as convenient for her to take it at the ferry. 

After repeated injunctions not to fail of her 
appointment, Miss Ludington finally bade her 
old school-mate good-by and drove home in a 
state of pleased expectancy. 

She entertained Paul at the tea-table with an 
account of her adventure, and gave him an ani- 
mated history of the Cobb family in general 
and Sarah in particular. She had known Sarah 
ever since they both could walk, and during the 
latter part of their school life they had been in- 
separable. The scholars had even christened 
them " The Twins,” because they were so much 
together and looked so much alike. * Their se- 
crets were always joint property. 

The next afternoon Miss Ludington went 
herself in the carriage to fetch her friend from 
the ferry. She wanted to be with her and 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTEA\ 


47 


enjoy her surprise when she first saw the 
restored Hilton on entering the grounds. In 
this respect her anticipations were fully justi- 
fied. 

The arrangement of the grounds was such 
that a high board fence protected the interior 
from inquisitive passers-by on the highway, 
and the gate was set in a corner, so that no 
considerable part of the enclosure was visible 
from it. The gravelled driveway, immediately 
after entering the grounds, took a sharp turn 
around the corner of the gardener's cottage, 
which answered for a gate-keeper’s lodge. The 
moment, however, it was out of sight from the 
highway it became transformed into a country 
road, with wide, grassy borders and footpaths 
close to the rail fences, while just ahead lay the 
silent village, with the small, brown, one-story, 
one-roomed school-house on one side of the 
green, and the little white box of a meeting- 
house, with its gilt weathercock, on the other. 

As this scene burst upon Mrs. Slater’s view, 


48 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


her bewilderment was amusing to witness. Her 
appearance for a moment was really as if she 
believed herself the victim of some sort of magic, 
and suspected her friend of being a sorceress. 
Reassured on this point by Miss Ludington’s 
smiling explanation, her astonishment gave place 
to the liveliest interest and curiosity. The 
carriage was forthwith stopped and sent 
around to the stables, while the two friends 
went on foot through the village. Every house, 
every fence-corner, every lilac-bush or clump of 
hollyhocks, or row of currant-bushes in the 
gardens, suggested some reminiscence, and the 
two old ladies were presently laughing and 
crying at once. At every dwelling they 
lingered long, and went on reluctantly with 
many backward glances, and all their speech 
was but a repetition of, ” Don’t you remember 
this?” and ” Do you remember that?” 

Mrs. Slater, having left Hilton but recently, 
was able to explain just what had been 
removed, replaced, or altered subsequent to 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


49 


Miss Ludington’s flight. The general appear- 
ance of the old street, Mrs. Slater said, 
remained much the same, despite the changes 
which had driven Miss Ludington away; but 
new streets had been opened up, and the popu- 
lation of the village had trebled, and become 
largely foreign. 

In their slow progress they came at last to 
the school-house. 

The door was ajar, and they entered on tiptoe, 
like tardy scholars. With a glance of mutual 
intelligence they hung their hats, each on the 
one of the row of wooden pegs in the entry, 
which had been hers as a school-girl, and 
through the open door entered the silent school- 
room and sat down in the self-same seats in 
which two maidens, so unlike them, yet linked 
to them by so strangely tender a tie, had 
reigned as school-room belles nearly half a cen- 
tury before. In hushed voices, with moist eyes, 
and faces shining with the light of other days, 
these gray-haired women talked together of the 


50 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

scenes which that homely old room had wit- 
nessed, the long-silent laughter, and the voices, 
no more heard on earth, with which it had 
once echoed. 

There in the corner stood a great wrought- 
iron stove, the counterpart of the one around 
whose red-hot sides they had shivered, in their 
short dresses, on cold winter mornings. On the 
walls hung the quaint maps of that period 
whence they had received geographical impres- 
sions, strangely antiquated now. Along one 
side of the room ran a black-board, on which 
they had been wont to demonstrate their igno- 
rance of algebra and geometry to the complete 
satisfaction of the master, while behind them as 
they sat was a row of recitation benches, asso- 
ciated with so many a trying ordeal of school- 
girl existence. 

"Do you ever think where the girls are in 
whose seats we are sitting?’' said Mrs. Slater, 
musingly. ” I can remember myself as a girl, 
more or less distinctly, and can even be 


MISS LUDINGTON*S SISTER. 


51 


sentimental about her; but it doesn’t seem 
to me that I am the same person at all ; 
I can’t realize it.’^ 

” Of course you can’t realize it. Why should 
you expect to realize what is not true ? ” replied 
Miss Ludington. 

” But I am the same person,” responded Mrs. 
Slater. 

Miss Ludington regarded her with a smile. 

"You have kept your looks remarkably, my 
dear,” she said. " You did not lose them all at 
once, as I did ; but isn’t it a little audacious to 
try to pass yourself off as a school-girl of seven- 
teen ? ” 

Mrs. Slater laughed. " But I once was she, 
if I am not now,” she said. "You won’t deny 
that.” 

" I certainly shall deny it, with your per- 
mission,” replied Miss Ludington. ‘‘I remem- 
ber her very well, and she was no more an old 
woman like you than you are a young girl like 
her.” 


52 


MISS LUDING TON'S SISTER. 


Mrs. Slater laughed again. ” How sharp 
you are getting, my dear ! she said. ” Since you 
are so close after me I shall have to admit 
that I have changed slightly in appearance 
in the forty odd years since we went to school 
at Hilton, and Til admit that my heart is even 
less like a girl’s than my face; but, though 
I have changed so much, I am still the same 
person, I suppose.” 

” Which do you mean?” inquired Miss 
Ludington. "You say in one breath that you 
are a changed person, and that you are the 
same person. If you are a changed person you 
can’t be the same, and if you are the same you 
can’t have changed.” 

" I should really like to know what you are 
driving at,” said Mrs. Slater, calmly. " It seems 
to me that we are disputing about words.” 

" Oh, no, not about words ! It is a great deal 
more than a question of words,” exclaimed Miss 
Ludington. " You say that we old women 
and the girls who sat here forty years and more 


• MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


S3 


ago are the same persons, notwithstanding 
we are so completely transformed without 
and within. I say we are not the same, and 
thank God, for their sweet sakes, that we are 
not. Surely that is not a mere dispute about 
words.” 

''But, if we are not those girls, then what 
has become of them?” asked Mrs. Slater. 

"You might better ask what had become of 
them if you had to seek them in us ; but I will 
tell you what has become of them, Sarah. It 
is what will become of us when we, in our turn, 
vanish from earth, and the places that know 
us now shall know us no more. They are 
immortal with God, and we shall one day 
meet them over there.” 

" What a very odd idea ! ” exclaimed Mrs. 
Slater, regarding her friend with astonishment. 

Miss Ludington flushed slightly as she replied, 
" I don’t think it half so odd, and not nearly 
so repulsive, as your notion, that we old 
women are the mummies of the girls who came 


54 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


before us. It is easier, as well as far sweeter, 
for me to believe that our youth is somewhere 
immortal, than that it has been withered, 
shrivelled, desiccated into .our old age. Oh, no, 
my dear. Paradise is not merely a garden of 
withered flowers ! We shall find the rose and 
lily of our life blooming there.” 

The hours had slipped away unnoted as the 
friends talked together, and now the lengthen- 
ing shadows on the school-room floor recalled 
Miss Ludington to the present, and to the duties 
of a hostess. 

As they walked slowly across the green 
toward. the homestead, she told her friend more 
fully of this belief in the immortality of past 
selves which had so recently come to her, and 
especially how it had quite taken away the 
melancholy with which she had all her life 
before looked back upon her youth. Mrs. 
Slater listened in silence. 

” Where on earth did you get that portrait ? ” 
she exclaimed, as Miss Ludington, after taking 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


55 


her on a tour through the house before tea, 
brought her into the sitting-room. 

" Whom does it remind you of ? asked 
Miss Ludington. 

” I know whom it reminds me of,’’ replied 
Mrs. Slater ; " but how it ever got here is what 
puzzles me.” 

”I thought you would recognize it,” said 
Miss Ludington, with a pleased smile, " I 
suppose you think it odd you should never 
have seen it, considering whom it is of ? ” 

I do, certainly,” replied Mrs. Slater. 

"You see,” explained Miss Ludington, "I 
did not have it painted till after I left Hilton. 
You remember that little ivory portrait" of 
myself, at seventeen, which I thought so 
much of after I lost my looks ? Well, this 
portrait I had enlarged from that. I have 
always believed that it was very like, but you 
don’t know what a reassurance it is to me to 
have you recognize it so instantly.” 

At the tea-table Paul appeared, and was 


56 


M/SS LUDINGTON’S SISTER. 


introduced to Mrs. Slater, who regarded him 
with considerable interest. Miss Ludington 
had informed her that he was her cousin and 
heir, and had told her something of his 
romantic devotion to the Ida of the picture. 
Paul, who from Miss Ludington had learned 
all there was to be known about the per- 
sons and places of old Hilton, entered with 
much interest into the conversation of the 
ladies on the subject, and after tea accom- 
panied them in their stroll through that part 
of the village which they had not inspected 
before. 

When they returned to the house it was quite 
dark, and they had lights in the sitting-room, 
and refreshments were served. Mrs. Slater’s 
eyes were frequently drawn toward the picture 
over the fireplace, and some reference of hers 
to the immortelles in which it was framed, 
turned the conversation upon the subject that 
Miss Ludington and she had been discussing in 
the school-house. 


Af/SS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


57 


Mrs. Slater, whose conversation showed her 
to be a woman of no great culture, but unusual 
force of character and intelligence, expressed 
herself as interested in the idea of the immor- 
tality of past selves, but decidedly sceptical. 
Paul grew eloquent in maintaining its truth and 
reasonableness, and, indeed, that it was the 
only intelligible theory of immortality that was 
possible. The idea that the same soul suc- 
cessively animated infancy, childhood, youth, 
manhood, and maturity, was, he argued, but 
a modification of the curious East Indian 
dream of metempsychosis, according to which 
every soul is supposed to inhabit in turn in- 
numerable bodies. * 

"You almost persuade me,'’ said Mrs. Slater, 
at last. "But I never heard of the spirit of 
anybody's past self appearing to them. If 
there are such spirits why have they never 
manifested themselves? Nobody ever heard 
of the spirit of one’s past self appearing at a 
spiritualist seance, for instance." 


58 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

” That is one evidence among others,” replied 
Paul, ” that spiritualism is a fraud. The medi- 
ums merely follow the vulgar superstition in 
the kind of spirits that they, claim to produce.” 

" Very likely you are right,” said Mrs. Slater. 
” In fact, I presume you are quite right. And 
yet, if I really believed as you do, do you 
know what I would do? I would go to some 
of the spirit-mediums over in New York, of 
whom the papers are giving such wonderful 
accounts, and let them try to materialize for 
me the spirit of my youth. Probably they 
couldn’t do it, but possibly they might; and 
a mighty little sight, Mr. De Riemer, is more 
convincing than all the belief in the world. If 
I could see the spirit of my youth face to face, 
I should believe that it had a separate exist- 
ence from my own. Otherwise, I don’t believe 
I ever could.” 

” But the mediums are a set of humbugs ! ” 
exclaimed Paul ; and then he added, ” I beg 
your pardon. Perhaps you are a spiritualist?” 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


S9 


"You need not beg my pardon,” said Mrs. 
Slater, good-humoredly. " I am not a spir- 
itualist beyond thinking — and that is only 
lately — that there may possibly be something 
in it, after all. Perhaps there may be, for 
example, one part of truth to a hundred 
parts of fraud. I really don't believe there 
is more. Now, as you think the mediums 
humbugs, and I am sure most of them are, 
their failure to accomplish anything would 
not shake your faith in your theory, and you 
would only have lost an evening and the fee 
you paid the medium. On the other hand, 
there is a bare possibility, — mind you, I think 
it is no more than that, — a bare possibility, 
say the smallest possible chance, but a chance 
— that you would see — her,” and Mrs. Slater 
glanced at the portrait. 

Paul turned pale. 

Miss Ludington, with much agitation, ex- 
claimed, ‘‘ If I thought there was any possi- 


6o 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


bility of that, do you suppose, Sarah, that I 
would consider time or money?'’ 

” I don’t suppose you would,” replied Mrs. 
Slater. "You would not need to; but the 
money is something which I should have to 
consider, if it were my case. The best 
materializing mediums charge pretty well. . 
Mrs. Legrand, who I believe is considered the 
leading light just now, charges fifty dollars for 
a private seance. Now, fifty dollars, I suppose, 
does not seem a large sum to you, but it would 
be a great deal for a poor woman like me to 
spend. And yet if I believed this wonderful 
thing that you believe, and I thought there was 
one chance in a million that this woman could 
demonstrate it to me by the assurance of sight, 

I would live on crusts from the gutter till I had 
earned the money to go to her.” 

Paul rose from his chair, and, after walking 
across the floor once or twice, stood leaning 
his arm on the mantel-piece. He cleared his 
throat, and said : — 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


6i 


" Have you ever seen this Mrs. Legrand 
yourself? I mean, have you ever been present 
at one of her seances?^’ 

" Not on my own account,’' replied Mrs. 
Slater. ” It was a mere accident my chancing 
to know anything about her. I have a friend, 
a Mrs. Rhinehart, who has recently lost her 
husband, and she got in a way of going to this 
Mrs. Legrand’s seances to see him, and once 
she took me with her.” 

Miss Ludington and Paul waited a moment, 
and then, perceiving that she was not going to 
say anything niore, exclaimed in the same 
breath, ”Did you see anything?” 

"We saw the figure of a fine-looking man,” 
replied Mrs. Slater. " We could dikinguish 
his features and expression very plainly, and 
he seemed to recognize my friend. She said 
that it was her husband. Of course I know 
nothing about that. I had never seen him 
alive. It may all have been a humbug, as I 
was prepared to believe it ; but I assure you it 


62 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


was a curious business, and I haven^t got over 
the impression which it made on me, yet. I’m 
not given to believing in things that claim to 
be supernatural, but I will admit that what I 
saw that night was very strange. Humbug or 
no humbug, what she saw seemed to comfort 
my poor friend more than all the religions or 
philosophies ever revealed or invented could 
have done. You see, these are so vague, even 
when we try to believe them, and that was so 
plain.” 

A silence followed Mrs. Slater’s words, during 
which she sat with an absent expression of 
countenance and a far-away look, as if recalling 
in fancy the scene which she had described. 
Miss Ludington’s hands trembled as they lay 
together in her lap, and she was regarding the 
picture of the girl over the fireplace with a fixed 
and intense gaze, apparently oblivious of all 
else. 

Paul broke the silence. 1 am going to see 
this woman,” he said, quietly. "You need not 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


63 


think of going with me, aunty, unless you care 
to. I will go alone/' 

"Do you think I shall let you go alone?" 
replied Miss Ludington, in a voice which she 
steadied with difficulty. . "Am I not as much 
concerned as you are, Paul?" 

"Where does this Mrs. Legrand live?" Paul 
asked Mrs. Slater. 

"I really can't tell you that, Mr. De Riemer," 
she said. " It was sometime ago that I attended 
the seance I spoke of, and all I recall is that it 
was somewhere in the lower part of the city, on 
the east side of Broadway, if I am not mis- 
taken." 

"Perhaps you could ascertain her address 
from the friend of whom you spoke, if it would 
not be too much trouble?" suggested Miss 
Ludington. 

" I might do that," assented Mrs. Slater. " If 
she still goes to the seances she would know it. 
But these mediums don’t generally stay long in 
one place, and it is quite possible that this Mrs. 


64 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


Legrand may not be in the city now. But if I 
can get her address for you I will. And now, 
my dear, as I am rather tired after our walk 
about the village, and probably you are too, I 
will go to my room.’* 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


6S 


CHAPTER V. 

^ /T^S. SLATER went away the next morn- 
ing. On the following day but one Miss 
Ludington received a letter from her. She told 
her friend how glad she was that she had not 
postponed her visit to her, for if she had set it 
for a single day later she could not have made 
it at all. When she returned home she found 
that her husband had received an offer of a lu- 
crative business position in Cincinnati, contin- 
gent on his immediate removal there. 

They had been in a whirl of packing ever 
since, and were to take that night’s train for 
Cincinnati, and whether they ever again came 
East to live was very doubtful. In a postscript, 
written crosswise, she said : — 

" I have been in such a rush ever since I came 
home that I declare I had clean forgotten till 
this moment about my promise to hunt up Mrs. 


66 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


Legrand’s address for you. Very likely you 
have also forgotten by this time our talk about 
her, and if so it will not matter. But it vexes 
me to fail in a promise, and, if possible, I will 
snatch a moment before we leave to send a note 
to the friend I spoke of, and ask her to look 
the woman up for you.’* 

Instead of being disappointed. Miss Luding- 
ton was, on the whole, relieved to get this letter, 
and inclined to hope that Mrs. Slater had failed 
to find the time to ^write her friend. In that 
case this extraordinary project of visiting a 
spiritualist medium would quietly fall through, 
which was the best thing that could happen. 

Tlie fact is, after sleeping on it, she had seen 
clearly that such a proceeding for a person of 
her position and antecedents would not only 
be preposterous, but almost disreputable. She 
was astonished at herself to think that her feel- 
ings could have been so wrought upon as to 
cause her seriously to contemplate such a step. 
All her life she had held the conviction, which 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


67 


she supposed to be shared by all persons of 
culture and respectability, that spiritualism was 
a low and immoral superstition, invariably im- 
plying fraud in its professors, and folly in its 
dupes : something, in fact, quite below the notice 
of persons of intelligence or good taste. As 
for the idea that this medium could show her 
the spirit of her former self, or any other real 
spirit, it was simply imbecile to entertain it for 
a moment. 

If, however. Miss Ludington was relieved by 
Mrs. Slater’s letter, Paul was keenly disap- 
pointed. His prejudice against spiritualism was 
by no means so deeply rooted as hers. In a 
general way he had always believed mediums 
to be frauds, and their shows mere shams, but 
he had been ready to allow with Mrs. Slater, 
that, mixed up in all this fraud, there might 
be a very little truth. 

His mind admitted a bare possibility that 
this Mrs. Legrand might be able to show him 
the living face and form of his spirit-love. 


68 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


That possibility once admitted had completely 
dominated his imagination, and it made little 
difference whether it was one chance in a 
thousand or one in a million. He was like 
the victim of the lottery mania, whose ab- 
sorption in contemplating the possibility of 
drawing the prize renders him quite oblivious 
of the nine hundred and ninety-nine blank 
tickets. 

Previous to Mrs. Slater’s visit he had been 
quite content in his devotion to an ideal mis- 
tress, for the reason that any nearer approach 
to her had not occurred to him as a possibility. 
But now the suggestion that he might see her 
face to face had so inflamed his imagination 
that it was out of the question for him to 
regain his former serenity. He resolved that, 
in case they should fail to hear from Mrs. 
Slater’s friend, he would set about finding Mrs. 
Legrand himself, or, failing that, would go to 
some other medium. There would be no 
solace for the fever that had now got into his 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


69 


blood, until experiment should justify his 
daring hope, or prove it baseless. 

However, the third day after Mrs. Slater's 
letter there came one from her friend, Mrs. 
Rhinehart. She said that she had received a 
note from Mrs. Slater, who had suddenly been 
called to Cincinnati, telling that Miss Lud- 
ington desired the address of Mrs. Legrand, 
with a view to securing a private seance. She 
could have sent the address at once, as she had 
it; but Mrs. Legrand was so overrun with busi- 
ness that an application to her by letter, 
especially from a stranger like Miss Ludington, 
might not have any result. And so Mrs. 
Rhinehart, who had been only too happy to 
oblige any friend of Mrs. Slater's, had called 
personally upon Mrs. Legrand to arrange for 
the seance. The medium had told her at first 
that she was full of previous engagements for 
a month ahead, and that it would be impossible 
to give Miss Ludington a seance. When, how- 
ever, Mrs. Rhinehart told her that Miss 


70 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


Ludington's purpose in asking for the seance 
was to test the question whether our past 
selves have immortal souls distinct from our 
present selves, Mrs. Legrand became greatly 
interested, and at once said that she would 
cancel a previous appointment, and give Miss 
Ludington a seance the following evening, at 
her parlors. No. — East Tenth street, at nine 
o’clock. Mrs. Legrand had said that while she 
had never heard a belief in the immortality 
of past selves avowed, there had not been 
lacking in her relations with the spirit-world 
some mysterious experiences that seemed to 
confirm it. She should, therefore, look 
forward to the issue of the experiment the 
following evening with nearly as much con- 
fidence, and quite as much interest, as Miss 
Ludington herself. Mrs. Rhinehart hoped that 
the following evening would be convenient 
for Miss Ludington. She had assumed the 
responsibility of making the engagement posi- 
tive, as she might have failed in securing a 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


71 


seance altogether had she waited to communi- 
cate with Miss Ludington. Hoping that ” the 
conditions would be favorable,’’ she remained, 
etc., etc. 

When Miss Ludington had read this letter 
to Paul, she intimated, though rather faintly, 
that it was still not too late to withdraw 
from the enterprise; they could send Mrs. 
Legrand her fee, say that it was not con- 
venient for them to come on the evening 
fixed, and so let the matter drop. Paul stared 
at her in astonishment, and said that, if she 
did not feel like going, he would go alone, as 
he had at first proposed. Upon this Miss 
Ludington once more declared that they 
would go together, and said nothing further 
about sacrificing the appointment. 

The fact is she did not really wish to sacri- 
fice it. She was experiencing a revulsion of 
feeling; Mrs. Rhinehart’s letter had affected 
her almost as strongly as Mrs. Slater’s talk. 
The fact that Mrs. Legrand had at once seen 


72 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


the reasonableness and probability of the belief 
in the immortality of past selves made it diffi- 
cult for Miss Ludington to think of her as a 
mere vulgar impostor. The vague hint of 
the medium’s as to strange experiences with 
the spirit world, confirmatory of this belief, 
appealed to her imagination in a powerful 
manner. Of what description might the mys- 
terious monitions be, which, coming to this 
woman in the dim between-world where she 
groped, had prepared her to accept as true, on 
its first statement, a belief that to others 
seemed so hard to credit? What clutchings 
of spirit fingers in the dark ! What meanings 
of souls whom no one recognized ! 

The confidence which Mrs. Legrand had 
expressed that the seance would prove a 
success affected Miss Ludington very power- 
fully. It impressed her as the judgment of an 
expert ; it compelled her to recognize not only 
as possible, but even as probable, that, on the 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


73 


evening of the following day, she should be- 
hold the beautiful girl whom once, so many 
years before, she had called herself ; for so at 
best would words express this wonder. 

With a trembling ecstasy, which in vain she 
tried to reason down, she began to prepare 
herself for the presence of one fresh from the 
face of God and the awful precincts of eternity. 

As for Paul, there was no conflict of feeling 
with prejudice in his case; he gave himself 
wholly >up to a delirious expectation. How 
would his immortal mistress look? How 
would she move? What would be her stature, 
— what her bearing? How would she gaze 
upon him? If not with love he should die 
at her feet. If with love how should he 
bear it? 

Mrs. RhineharPs letter had been received in 
the morning, and during the rest of the day 
Miss Ludington and Paul seemed quite to forget 
each other in their absorption in the thoughts 
suggested by the approaching event. They sat 


74 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


abstracted and silent at table, and, on rising, 
went each their own way. In the exalted state 
of their imaginations the enterprise they had 
in hand would not bear talking over. 

When she retired to bed Miss Ludington 
found that sleep was out of the question. 
About two o'clock in the morning she heard 
Paul leave his room and go downstairs. Put- 
ting on dressing-gown and slippers she softly 
followed him. There was a light in the sit- 
ting-room and the door was ajar. Stepping 
noiselessly to it she looked in. 

Paul was standing before the fireplace, lean- 
ing on the mantel-piece, and looking up into 
the eyes of the girl above, smiling and talking 
softly to her. Miss Ludington entered the 
room and laid her hand gently on his arm. 
Pier appearance did not seem to startle him in 
the least. "Paul, my dear boy!" she said, 
"you had better go to bed.’’ 

" It’s no use," he said ; " I can’t sleep, and I 
had to come down here and look at her. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


75 


Think, just think, aunty, that to-morrow we 
shall see her/' 

The young fellow's nervous excitement cul- 
minated in a burst of ecstatic tears, and soon 
afterwards Miss Ludington induced him to go 
to bed. 

How much more he loved the girl than 
' even she did ! She was filled with dread as she 
thought of the effect which a disappointment 
of the hope he had given himself up to might 
produce. And what folly, after all, it was to 
expect anything but disappointment ! 

The spectacle of Paul's fatuous confidence 
had taken hers away. 


75 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


CHAPTER VI. 

S the drive over to East Tenth street was 



^ a long one, the carriage had been ordered 
at seven o’clock, and soon after tea, of which 
neither Miss Ludington nor Paul had been able 
to take a mouthful, they set out. 

"I am afraid we are doing something very 
wrong and foolish,” said Miss Ludington, 
feebly, as the carriage rolled down the village 
street. 

During the drive of nearly two hours not 
another word was said. 

The carriage at length drew up before the 
house in Tenth street. It stood in a brick block, 
and there was no sign of the business pursued 
within, except a small white card on the door 
bearing the words, " Mrs. Legrand. Mate- 
rializing, Business, and Test Medium. Clair- 
voyant.” 


MISS LUDINGTON' S SISTER. 


77 


An old-looking little girl of ten or twelve 
years of age opened the door. The child’s 
big black eyes, and long snaky locks falling 
about a pale face, gave her an elfish look quite 
in keeping with the character of the house. 
She at once ushered the callers into the front 
parlor, where a lady and gentleman were sitting, 
who proved to be Mrs. Legrand and her 
manager and man of business. Dr. Hull. 

The latter was a tall person, of highly re- 
spectable and even imposing appearance, to 
which a high forehead, a pair of gold-bowed 
spectacles, and a long white beard considerably 
added. He looked like a scholar, and his 
speech was that of a man of education. 

Mrs. Legrand was a large woman, with 
black hair sprinkled with gray and worn short 
like a man’s. She had a swarthy complexion, 
and her eyes were surrounded by noticeably 
large dark rings, giving an appearance of 
wretched ill-health. Her manner was extreme- 
ly languid, as of a person suffering from 


78 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


nervous exhaustion. She kept her eyes half 
shut, and spoke as if with an effort. 

"Did Mrs. Rhinehart tell you,’’ she said to 
Miss Ludington, "of the interest which I feel 
in your theory, that the souls of our past selves 
exist in spirit-land? If my seance to-night 
realizes your expectations, spirit science will 
have taken a great step forward.” 

" My conviction will remain the same what- 
ever the result may be to-night,” said Miss Lud- 
ington. 

" I am glad to hear you say so,” replied Mrs. 
Legrand, languidly ; " but I feel that we shall 
be successful, and my intuitions rarely deceive 
me. 

A trembling came over Paul at these words. 

There was a little more general conversation, 
and the silence which followed was interrupted 
by Dr. Hull. 

" I suppose there is no reason why the seance 
should not proceed, Mrs. Legrand?” 

”I know of none,” assented that lady in a 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


79 


lifeless tone. "Please show our friends the 
cabinet/’ 

Dr. Hull rose. "It is usual/’ he said, "for 
those who attend our seances to be asked to 
satisfy themselves that deception is impossible 
by an examination of the apartment which 
Mrs. Legrand occupies during her trance, and 
from which the materialized spirit appears. 
Will you kindly step this way?” 

The room in which they sat was a long apart- 
ment, divided by double sliding doors into a 
front and back parlor, the former of which had 
been the scene of the preceding conversation. 

Dr. Hull now conducted the two visitors into 
the back parlor, which proved to be of similar 
size and appearance to the front parlor, except 
that it contained no furniture whatever. There 
was only one window in the back parlor, and 
this was firmly closed by inside blinds. 

It was also uncurtained, and in plain view 
from the front parlor. Besides the connection 
with the front parlor, there was but one door in 


8o 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


the back parlor. This opened into a small 
apartment, about six feet by five, which had 
been taken out of the right-hand rear corner of 
the back parlor, and was separated from it by a 
partition reaching to the ceiling. This was 
the cabinet. It had neither window nor door 
except the one into the back parlor. A sofa 
was its only article of furniture, and this was of 
wicker-work, so that nothing could be concealed 
beneath it. 

” Mrs. Legrand lies upon this sofa while in 
the state of trance, during which the spirit 
is materialized and appears to us,’’ explained 
Dr. Hull. 

A rug lay on the floor of the cabinet, the 
walls were of hard-finished white plaster, quite 
bare, and the ceiling, like that of the parlors, 
was plain white without ornament. 

There seemed no possibility of introducing 
any person into the cabinet or the back parlor 
without the knowlege of those in the front 
parlor. But Dr. Hull insisted upon making 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


8l 


assurance doubly sure by pounding upon the 
walls and pulling up the rug in the cabinet, to 
prove that no sliding panel or trap-door trick 
was possible. There was something calculated 
to make an unbeliever very uneasy in the 
quiet confidence of these people, and the 
business-like way in which they went to 
work to make it impossible to account for any 
phenomenon that might appear, on any other 
but a supernatural theory. No doubt what- 
ever now remained in the mind of Miss Lud- 
ington or Paul that the wonderful mystery 
which they had hardly dared to dream of was 
about to be enacted before them. They fol- 
lowed Dr. Hull on his tour of inspection as 
if they were in a dream, mechanically ob- 
serving what he pointed out, but replying 
at random to his remarks, and, indeed, barely 
aware of what they were doing. The sense 
of the unspeakably awful and tender scene so 
soon to pass before their eyes absorbed every 
susceptibility of their minds. 


82 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


Nor indeed would this detective work have 
had any interest for them in any case. They 
would have been willing to concede the 
medium all the machinery she desired. There 
was no danger that they could be deceived 
as to the reality of the face and form that for 
so many years had been enshrined in their 
memories. 

There might be as many side entrances to 
the cabinet as desired, but she whom they 
looked for could come only from the spirit-land. 

The front parlor, too, having been inves- 
tigated, to show the impossibility of any 
person’s being concealed there. Dr. Hull pro- 
ceeded to close and lock the hall-door, that 
being the only exit connecting this suite of 
rooms with the rest of the house. Having 
placed a heavy chair against the locked door, 
for further security, he gave the key to Paul. 

Mrs. Legrand now rose, and without a word 
to any one passed through the back parlor and 
disappeared in the cabinet. 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


83 


As she did so a wild desire to fly from the 
room and the house came over Miss Lud- 
ington. Not that she did not long inexpressi- 
bly to see the vision that was drawing near, 
whose beautiful feet might even now be on 
the threshold, but the sense of its awfulness 
overcame her. She felt that she was not fit, 
not ready, for it now. If she could only have 
more time to prepare herself, and then could 
come again. But it was too late to draw 
back. 

Dr. Hull had arranged three chairs across 
the broad door-way between the back and front 
parlors, and facing the former. He asked Miss 
Ludington to occupy the middle chair, and, 
trembling in every limb, she did so. Paul took 
the chair by her side, the other being appar- 
ently for Dr. Hull. 

The elfish little girl, whom they called Alta, 
and who appeared to be the daughter of Mrs. 
Legrand, meanwhile took her place at a piano 
standing in the front parlor. 


84 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


All being now ready, Dr. Hull proceeded to 
turn the gas in the two parlors very low. The 
jets in both rooms were controlled by a stop- 
cock in the wall by the side of the door-way 
between them. There were two jets in the back 
parlor, fastened to the wall dividing it from the 
front parlor, one on each side of the door, so as 
to throw light on any figure coming out of 
the cabinet. The light they diffused, after 
being turned down, was enough to render forms 
and faces sufficiently visible for the recognition 
of aquaintances, though a close study of feat- 
ures would have been difficult. 

It now appeared that the glass shades of 
the jets in the back parlor were of a bluish 
tint, which lent a peculiarly weird effect to the 
illumination. 

Dr. Hull now took the remaining chair by 
Miss Ludington’s side, and a perfect silence of 
some moments ensued, during which she could 
perfectly hear the beating of Paul’s heart. Then 
Alta began, with a wonderfully soft touch, to 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


85 


play a succession of low, dreamy chords, rather 
than any set composition, — music that thrilled 
the listeners with vague suggestions of the un- 
fathomable mystery and unutterable sadness of 
human life. She played on and on. It seemed 
to two of the hearers that she played for hours, 
although it was probably but a few minutes. 

At last the music flowed slower, trickled, 
fell in drops, and ceased. 

They had a sensation of being breathed 
upon by a faint, cool draught of air, and then 
appeared in the door-way of the cabinet the 
figure of a beautiful girl, which, after standing 
still a moment, glided forth, by an impercep- 
tible motion, into the room. 

The light, which had before seemed so faint, 
now proved sufficient to bring out every line of 
her face and form. Or was it that the figure it- 
self was luminous by some light from within? 

Paul heard Miss Ludington gasp; but if he 
had known that she was dying he could not 
have taken his eyes from the apparition. 


86 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


For it was Ida who stood before him; no 
counterfeit of the painter now, but radiant with 
life.^ 

Her costume was exactly that of her picture, 
white, with a low bodice; but how utterly had 
the artist failed to reproduce the ravishing 
contours of her young form, the enchanting 
sweetness of her expression. The golden hair 
fell in luxuriant tresses about the face and down 
the dazzling shoulders. The lips were parted 
in a pleased smile as, with a gliding motion, she 
approached the rapt watchers. 

Her eyes rested on Miss Ludington with a 
look full of recognition and a tenderness that 
seemed beyond the power of mortal eyes to ex- 
press. 

Then she looked at Paul. Her smile was 
no longer the smile of an angel, but of a 
woman. The light of her violet eyes burned 
like delicious flame to the marrow of his bones. 

She was so near him that he could have 
touched her. Her beauty overcame his 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


87 


senses. Forgetting all else, in an agony of 
love, he was about to clasp her in his arms, 
but she drew back with a gentle gesture 
of denial. 

Then a sudden and indescribable wavering 
passed over her face, like the passing of the 
wind over a field of rye, and slowly, as if reluc- 
tantly obeying an unseen attraction, she re- 
treated, still facing them, across the room, and 
disappeared within the cabinet. 

Instantly Alta touched the piano, playing 
the same slow, heavy chords as before. But 
this time she played but a few moments, and 
when she ceased, Mrs. Legrand's voice was 
heard faintly calling her. She glided between 
the chairs in the door-way and entered the 
cabinet, drawing a portiere across its door 
behind her. 

As she did so. Dr. Hull touched the stop- 
cock in the wall by his side, turning on the gas 

I 

in both parlors, and proceeded to unlock and 
open the hall-door. 


88 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


”It was the most successful seance I have 
ever witnessed,” he said. ” The conditions 
must have been unusually favorable. How 
were you pleased, Miss Ludington? ” 

The abrupt transition from the shadows of 
the between-world to the glare of gas-light, 
from the communion of spirits to the brisk 
business-like tones of Dr. Hull, was quite too 
much for the poor lady, and, with a piteous 
gesture, she buried her face in her hands. 

Alta now came out of the cabinet, and said 
that her mother would like them to examine it 
once more. 

Miss Ludington took no notice of the 
request, but Paul, who had continued to sit 
staring into vacancy, as if for him the seance 
were still going on, sprang up at Alta's invitation 
and accepted it with alacrity. The eagerness 
with which he peered into the corners of the 
cabinet, and the disappointment which his face 
showed when he perceived no trace of any 
person there save Mrs. Legrand and Alta, 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


89 


might naturally have suggested to them that 
he suspected fraud; but the fact was very 
different. His conduct was merely the result 
of a confused hope that he might gain another 
glimpse of Ida by following her to the place 
within which she had vanished. 

When Paul looked into the cabinet, Mrs. 
Legrand was lying upon the lounge, and Alta 
was administering smelling-salts to her. As he 
turned away disappointed, the medium rose 
and, leaning on her daughter, returned to the 
front parlor. She looked completely over- 
come. Her face was deathly pale, and the 
dark rings around her eyes were larger and 
darker than ever. She leaned back in her 
chair, which had a special rest for her head, and 
closed her eyes. 

As neither Dr. Hull nor Alta showed any 
surprise at her condition, it was apparently the 
ordinary result of a seance. 

To her faint inquiry whether the material- 
ization had been satisfactory to Miss Lud- 


90 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


ington, the latter replied that it had been all, 
and more than all, she had dared dream of. Dr. 
Hull, in a very enthusiastic manner, went on to 
describe the manifestation more particularly. 
He declared that the present evening a new 
world of spirit-life had been revealed, and 
a new era in spiritualism had opened. 

” I have been devoted to the study of spirit- 
ualism for thirty years,’' he exclaimed ; ” but I 
have never been present at so wonderful a 
seance as this. I grow dizzy when I think of 
the field of speculation which it opens up. The 
spirits of our past selves ! And yet why not, 
why not? Like all great discoveries it seems 
most simple when once brought to light. It 
accounts, no doubt, for the throng of unknown 
spirits of which mediums are so often conscious, 
and for the many materializations and com- 
munications which no one recognizes.” 

Meanwhile the wretched appearance of the 
medium aroused Miss Ludington’s sympathies, 
in spite of the distracted condition of her mind. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


91 


Is Mrs. Legrand always prostrated in this 
manner after a seance?” she asked. 

Dr. H;ill answered for the medium. ” Not 
generally quite so much so,” he said ; "the strain 
on her vitality is always very trying, but it is 
especially so .when a new spirit materializes, as 
to-night. Out of her being, somehow, and just 
how, I know no better than you, is woven the 
veil of seeming flesh, yes, and even the clothing 
which the spirit assumes in order to appear. 
The fact that Mrs. Legrand suffers from heart 
disease makes seances not only more exhaust- 
ing for her than for other mediums, but really 
dangerous. I have told her, as a physician, and 
other physicians have told her, that she is liable 
at any time to die in a trance.” 

Paul now spoke for the first time since the 
conclusion of the seance. "What do you fancy 
would be the effect on the spirit if a medium 
should die during a materialization, as you have 
supposed? ” he inquired. 

"That can only be a matter of theory,” 


92 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


replied Dr. Hull; "the accident has never 
happened.” 

"But it might happen.” 

"Yes, it might happen.” 

" Is not the spirit as much dependent on the 
medium for dematerializing and resuming the 
spirit-form, as for materializing?” asked Paul. 

"I see what you mean,” said Dr. Hull. "You 
think that in case the medium should die during 
a materialization, the spirit might be left in a 
materialized state. How does it strike you, 
Mrs. Legrand? ” 

" I don’t know,” replied that lady, with her 
eyes closed. " Spirits require our aid as much 
to lay aside their bodies as to assume them. If 
the medium died meantime, I should think 
that the spirit might find some trouble in de- 
materializing.” 

" Is it not possible,” said Paul, " that it might 
be unable to dematerialize at all? Would not 
the medium’s death close against it the only 
door by which it could return to the spirit- 


93 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 

world, shutting it out in this life with us 
henceforth? More than that: would not the 
already materialized spirit be in a position to 
succeed to the physical life which the medium 
relinquished ? Already possessed of a part of 
the medium’s vitality, would not the remainder 
naturally flow to it when given up in death, and 
thus complete its materialization ? ” 

"And give it an earthly body like ours?” 
exclaimed Miss Ludington. 

"Yes, like ours,” replied Paul. "I sup- 
pose it would simply take up its former 
life on earth where it had been left off*, ceasing 
to possess a spirit’s powers, and knowing only 
what and whom it knew at the point when its 
first life on earth had ceased.” 

"After what I have seen to-night, nothing 
will ever seem impossible to me again,” said 
Miss Ludington. 

" As Miss Ludington suggests,” observed 
Dr. Hull, " in spiritualism one soon ceases to 
consider whether a thing be wonderful or not, 


94 LUDII^TON^S SISTER, 

but only if it be true. And so as to this mat- 
ter. Now, if the death of a medium should be 
absolutely instantaneous, the spirit might, in- 
deed, be unable to dematerialize, and might 
even succeed to the medium^s earth life, as you 
suggest. The trouble with the theory — and it 
seems to me a fatal one — is, that death is almost 
never, if indeed it is ever, absolutely instantane- 
ous, but only comparatively so ; and it seems 
to me that the least possible interval of time 
would be sufficient to enable the spirit to de- 
materialize. Consequently, it strikes me, that 
while the result you suppose is theoretically 
possible, it could, practically, never occur. 
Still, the subject is one of mere conjecture at 
most, and one opinion is, perhaps, as good as 
another.’’ 

” I think you are probably right,” said Paul ; 
” it was only a fancy I had.” 

‘‘ Why does Mrs. Legrand persist in giving 
seances if she is not in a fit condition?” said 
Miss Ludington. 


MISS LUDINGT^N^S SISTER, 


95 


''Well/’ replied Dr. Hull, "you see we spirit- 
ualists do not regard death as so serious a 
matter as do many others. Our mediums, 
especially, who stand with one hand clasped 
by spirits and the other by mortals, are almost 
indifferent which way they are drawn ; besides, 
you see, she is recognized as the most fully 
developed medium in the United States to-day, 
and many spirits, which cannot materialize 
through other mediums, are dependent upon 
her; she feels that she has a duty to discharge 
toward the spirit-world, at whatever risk to 
herself. I doubt if to-night’s seance, for ex- 
ample, would have been successful with any 
other medium.” 

Immediately after this conversation Miss 
Ludington and Paul took their departure. Dr. 
Hull went out with them to the carriage, and 
was obliged to remind them of the little matter 
of Mrs. Legrand’s fee, which they had entirely 
forgotten. 


96 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


CHAPTER VII. 

"XTOW, before she ever had neard of Mrs. 

^ Legrand, Miss Ludington had fully be- 
lieved that her former self had an immortal 
existence, apart and distinct from her present 
self, and Paul, to whom she was indebted for 
this belief, held it even more firmly than she. 

But there is a great difference between the 
strongest form of faith and the absolute as- 
surance of sight. The effect of the vision which 
they had witnessed in Mrs. Legrand's parlors 
was almost as startling as if they had not 
expected to see it. 

Very little was said in the carriage going 
home, but, as they were crossing the ferry. Miss 
Ludington exclaimed, in an awe-struck voice, 
'' O Paul ! was it not strange ! ’’ 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


97 




''Strange? Strange?’’ he echoed, in strong, 
exultant tones. " How oddly you use the word, 
aunty ! You might well say how strange, if we 
mortals were isolated here on this little island 
of time, with no communication with the main- 
land of eternity ; but how can you call it strange 
when you find out that we are not isolated ? 
Surely it is not strange, but supremely reason- 
able, right, and natural.” 

" I suppose it is so,” said Miss Ludington, 
" but if I had let you go alone to-night, and 
stayed at home, I could never have fully be- 
lieved you when you told me what you had 
seen any more than I shall ever expect any one 
to believe me. Think, Paul, if I had not gone, 
if I had not seen her, if she had not given me 
that look ! I knew, of course, if she appeared 
that I should recognize her, but I did not dare 
to be sure that she would recognize me. I re- 
member her, but she never .saw me on earth.” 

"It was as a spirit that she knew you, and 
that is the way she knew me, and knew that I 


98 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


loved her,” said Paul, with a sudden huskiness 
in his voice. 

" Surely that makes it clear,” said Miss Lud- 
ington, " that the spirits of our past selves love 
us who follow them, as we, in looking back, yearn 
after them, and not merely await us at the end, 
but are permitted to watch over us as we com- 
plete the journey which they began. I am sure 
that if people knew this they would never feel 
lonely or forlorn again.” 

It was a relief to Paul when they reached 
home and he could be alone. 

In an ecstasy of happiness that was like a 
delicious pain, he sat till morning in his un- 
lighted chamber, gazing into the darkness with 
a set smile, motionless, and breathing only by 
deep, infrequent inhalations. What were the 
joys of mortal love to the transports that were 
his? What were the smoky fires of earthly 
passion to this pure, keen flame, almost too 
strong for a heart of flesh to bear? 

As he strove to realize what it was to be be- 


mss: LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


99 


loved by an immortal, the veil between time 
and eternity was melted by the hot breath of 
his passion, and the confines of the natural and 
the supernatural were confounded. 

As the east grew light he began to feel the 
weariness of the intense mental strain which 
had led up to, and culminated in, the tran- 
scendent experience of the previous evening 
A tranquil happiness succeeded his exalted 
mood, and, lying down, he slept soundly till 
noon, when he went downstairs to find Miss 
Ludington anxiously waiting for him to 
reassure her that her recollection of the last 
night was not altogether a dream, as she had 
half convinced herself since waking. 

Paul had to go into Brooklyn to do some 
business for Miss Ludington that day, but the 
men he dealt with seemed to him shadows. 

After finishing with them he went over to 
New York, and presently found himself on 
East Tenth street. He had not intended to go 
there. His feet had borne him involuntarily 


lOO 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


to the spot. He could not resist the temp- 
tation of drawing near to the place where she 
had been only a few hours before. He walked 
to and fro before Mrs. Legrand’s house for an 
hour, and then stood a long time on the 
opposite side, looking at the closed windows of 
the front parlor, quite unconscious that he had 
become an object of curiosity to numerous 
persons in adjoining houses, and of marked 
suspicion to the policeman on the corner. 

Finally he crossed the street, mounted the 
steps, and rang the bell. The door was opened, 
after a considerable interval, by Alta, the elfish 
little girl. Paul asked for Mrs. Legrand. Alta 
said that her mother was ill to-day, and not 
able to see any one. Paul then asked for Dr. 
Hull. He was not in. 

” I wanted to arrange for another seance,'' he 
said. 

‘‘ Will you write, or will you call to-morrow? " 
asked Alta, in a business-like manner. 

Paul said he would call. Then he hesitated. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


lOI 


" Excuse me/’ he said, ” but may I ask you 
if there is any one now in the parlor where we 
were last night?” 

” No one is there,” replied the little gin. 

” Could you let me just go in and see where 
she was ?” asked Paul, humbly. "I would not 
keep you a moment.” 

Alta, in her character of door-keeper to this 
house of mystery, was, doubtless, in the habit 
of seeing queer people, bent on queer errands. 
She merely asked him to step within the hall, 
saying that she would speak to her mother. 
Presently she returned with the desired per- 
mission, and, producing a key, unlocked the 
parlor door, and ushered Paul in. 

It was late in the afternoon, and the heavy 
curtains and blinds left the rooms almost dark. 
There was barely light enough to see that all 
was just as it had been the night before. The 
sounds of the street penetrated the closed apart- 
ments but faintly. With the step of one on 
holy ground, Paul advanced to the spot where 


102 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


he had been seated when the vision appeared 
to him the night before. 

Aided by the darkness, the silence, and by 
the identity of the surroundings, the memory of 
that vision returned to him as he stood there 
with a vividness which, in the overwrought 
condition of his nerves, it was impossible for 
him to distinguish from reality. Once more a 
radiant figure glided noiselessly from the 
cabinet, which was darkly outlined in the corner 
of the room, and stood before him. Once 
more her eyes burned on his, until, forgetting 
all but her beauty, he put forth his arms to 
clasp her. A startled exclamation from Alta 
banished the vision, and he perceived that he 
was smiling upon the empty air. 

He went away from the house ecstatically 
happy. He believed that he had really seen 
her. He had no doubt that, aided by the 
mediumship of love, she had actually appeared 
to him a second time in a form only a little 
less material than the night before. 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


103 


Of this experience he did not tell Miss Lud- 
ington. This interview, which Ida had granted 
to him alone, he kept as a precious secret. 

The next day, as he had promised, Paul 
called at Mrs. Legrand’s and saw Dr. Hull. 
That gentleman was unable to promise him 
anything definite about a seance, on account of 
Mrs. Legrand's continued illness. 

"Is she seriously sick?*' asked Paul, with a 
new terror. 

"I think not,'’ said Dr. Hull; " but her trouble 
is of the heart, the result of the nervous crises 
which a trance medium is necessarily subject to, 
and a disease of the heart may at any time 
take an unexpected turn.” 

"Has she the best advice?” asked Paul. 
"Excuse me; but if she has not, and if her 
pecuniary means do not enable her to afford 
it, I beg you will let me secure it for her.” 

Dr. Hull thanked him, but said that he was 
a physician himself, and that, on account of his 
acquaintance with her constitutional peculiar!- 


104 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


ties, Mrs. Legrand considered him, and he con- 
sidered himself, better able to treat her than 
any strange physician. "You seem to be very 
much interested in her case,” added the doctor, 
with a slight intonation of surprise. 

"Can you wonder?” replied Paul. "Is she 
not door-keeper between this world and the 
world of spirits where my love is? Don’t think 
me brutal if I confess to you that what I think 
of most is that her death might close that door.” 

" I do not think you brutal,” replied Dr. 
Hull; "what you feel is very natural.” 

" Is it not strange, — is it not hard to bear,” 
cried Paul, giving way to his feelings, " that the 
key of the gate between the world of spirits and 
of men should be intrusted to a weak and 
sickly woman ? ” 

"It is hard to bear, no doubt,” replied Dr. 
Hull ; " but it is not strange. It is in accord- 
ance with the laws by which this world has 
always been conducted. From the beginning 
has not the power of calling spirits out of the 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 105 

unknown into this earth life been intrusted to 
weak and sickly women? What the world 
loosely calls spiritualism is no isolated phe- 
nomenon or set of phenomena. The universe 
is spiritual. Much as we claim for our me- 
diums, the mediumship of motherhood is far 
more marvellous. Our mediums can enable 
spirits already alive, and able by their own 
wills to cooperate, to pass before our eyes 
for a moment. To hold them longer in our 
view exceeds their power. But these other 
women, these mothers, call souls out of nothing- 
ness, and clothe them with bodies, so that they 
speak, walk, work, love, and hate, some forty, 
some fifty, some seventy years.*’ 

"You are right,** said Paul, bowing his head- 
" It is not strange, though it is hard to bear.** 
The effect of the seance at Mrs. Legrand*s 
upon Miss Ludington had been far less disturb- 
ing than upon Paul. To her it had been a lofty 
spiritual consolation, setting the seal of absolute 
assurance upon a faith that had been before too 


Io6 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 

great, too strange, too beautiful for her to 
fully realize. 

When Paul brought word that Mrs. Legrand 
was sick and might die, and that if she died 
that first vision of Ida might also prove the 
last to be vouchsafed them on earth, although 
she was deeply grieved, yet the thought did 
not seem so intolerable to her as to him. 
She had, indeed, hoped that from time to 
time she should see Ida again; still her life 
was mostly past, and it was chiefly upon the 
communion they would enjoy in heaven, not 
momentary and imperfect as here, but peren- 
nial and complete, that her heart was set. 

Very different was it with Paul. He was 
young ; heaven was very far off, and the way 
thither, unless cheered by occasional visitations 
of his radiant mistress, seemed inexpressibly 
long and dreary. The nature of his sentiment 
for Ida had changed since he had seen her 
clothed in a living form, from the worship of 
a sweet but dim ideal to the passion which a 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 107 

living woman inspires. He thought of her no 
more as a spirit, lofty and serene, but as a 
beautiful maiden with the love-light in her 
eyes. 

He was not able to find his former inspira- 
tion in the picture above the fireplace. Its 
still enchantment was gone. The set smile, 
that had ever before seemed so sweet, palled 
upon him. The eyes, that had always been so 
tender, now lacked expression. The lips that 
the boy had climbed up to kiss, how had the 
artist failed to intimate their exquisite curves ! 
The whole picture had suffered a subtle de- 
terioration, and looked hard, wooden, lifeless, 
and almost unlike. The living woman had 
eclipsed the portrait. Fortunate it is for the 
fame of painters that their originals do not 
oftener return to earth. 

If Mrs. Legrand had been his own mother 
Paul could not have been more assiduous in 
his calls and inquiries as to her condition, nor 
could his relief have been, greater when, a few 


Io8 M/SS LUDINGTON’S SISTER. 

days later, Dr. Hull told him that the case had 
taken a favorable turn, and, according to her 
previous experience with such attacks, she 
would probably be as well as usual by the 
following day. Dr. Hull said that she had 
heard of Paul’s frequent inquiries for her, and 
while she did not flatter herself that his interest 
in her was wholly on her own account, she was, 
nevertheless, so far grateful that she would give 
him the first seance which she was able to 
hold, and that would be, if she continued to 
improve, on the following evening. 


MISS LUDING TON'S SISTER, 


109 


CHAPTER VIIL 

TF Miss Ludington’s desire for another 
glimpse of Ida had lacked the passionate 
intensity of Paul’s, she had, notwithstanding, 
longed for it very ardently, and when at nine 
o’clock the next night the carriage drew up 
before Mrs. Legrand’s door, she was in a 
transport of sweet anticipation. 

As for Paul he had dressed himself with 
extreme care for the occasion, and looked to 
his best advantage. He had said to himself. 
Shall I not show her as much observance as I 
would pay to a living woman? ” And who can 
say — for very odd, sometimes, are the inarticu- 
late processes of the mind — that there was not 
at the bottom of his thoughts something of the 
universal lover’s willingness to let his mistress 
see him at his best? 


no 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


They found the front parlor occupied as 
before by Mrs. Legrand and Dr. Hull, when 
Alta showed them in. The medium was, as 
previously, the picture of ill-health, and if she did 
not look noticeably worse than before her sick- 
ness, it was merely because she had looked as 
badly as possible then. In response to inqui- 
ries about her health she admitted that she did 
not really feel equal to resuming her seances 
quite so soon, and but for disliking to disap- 
point them would have postponed this evening’s 
appointment. Dr. Hull had, indeed, urged her 
to do so, 

”You must not think of giving a seance if 
there is any risk of injury to your health,” 
said Miss Ludington, though not without being 
sensible of a pang of disappointment. ” We 
could not think of letting you do that, could 
we, Paul ? ” 

Paul’s reply to this humane suggestion was 
not so prompt as it should have been. In 
his heart he felt at that moment that he was as 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


III 


bad as a murderer. He knew that he was will- 
ing this woman should risk not only her health, 
but even her life, rather than that he should 
fail to see Ida. He was striving to repress this 
feeling, so far at least as to say that he would 
not insist upon going on with the seance, when 
Mrs. Legrand, with a glance through her 
half-shut eyelids, intimating that she perfectly 
understood his thoughts, said, in a tone which 
put an end to the discussion, ” Excuse me, but 
I shall certainly give the seance. I am much 
obliged for your interest in me; but I am 
rather notional about keeping my promises, and 
it is a peculiarity in which my friends have to 
indulge me. I daresay I shall be none the 
worse for the exertion.” 

"Doctor,” she added, "will you allow our 
friends to inspect the cabinet?” 

"That is quite needless,” said Paul. 

" Our friends are often willing to waive an in- 
spection,” replied Dr. Hull. " VVe are grateful 
for the confidence shown, but, in justice to 


I 12 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


ourselves, as well as for their own more absolute 
assurance, we always insist upon it. Otherwise, 
suspicions of fraud not entertained, perhaps, at 
the time, might afterwards occur to the mind, or 
be suggested by others, to which they would 
have no conclusive answer.*’ 

Upon this Miss Ludington and Paul permitted 
themselves to be conducted upon the same tour 
of inspection that they had made the former 
evening. They found everything precisely as it 
had been on that occasion. There was no pos- 
sibility of concealing any person in the cabinet 
or the back parlor, and no apparent or conceiv- 
able means by which any person could reach 
those apartments, except through the front 
parlor. 

On their return to the latter apartment the 
proceedings followed the order observed at the 
previous seance. Mrs. Legrand rose from her 
chair and walked feebly through the back 
parlor into the ca]Dinet. Dr. Hull then locked 
and braced a chair against the door opening 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 1 13 

into the hall, giving the key to Paul. Then, 
having arranged the three chairs as before, 
across the double door between the parlors, he 
seated Miss Ludington and Paul, and, having 
turned the gas down, took the third chair. 

All being ready, Alta, who was at the 
piano, struck the opening chords of the same 
soft, low music that she had played at the 
previous seance. 

It seemed to Miss Ludington that she played 
much longer than before, and she began to 
think that either there was to be some failure 
in the seance, or that something had happened 
to Mrs. Legrand. 

Perhaps she was dead. This horrible 
thought, added to the strain of expectancy, 
affected her nerves so that in another moment 
she must have screamed out, when, as before 
she felt a faint, cool air fan her forehead, and a 
few seconds later Ida appeared at the door of 
the cabinet and glided into the room. 

She was dressed as at her former appear- 


1 14 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

ance, in white, with her shoulders bare, and the 
wealth of her golden hair falling to her waist 
behind. 

From the moment that she emerged from the 
shadows of the cabinet Paul’s eyes were glued 
to her face with an intensity quite beyond any 
ordinary terms of description. 

Fancy having not over a minute in which to 
photograph upon the mind a form the rec- 
ollection of which is to furnish the con- 
solation of a lifetime. The difficulties of 
securing this second seance, and the doubt that 
involved the obtaining of another, had deeply 
impressed him. He might never again see Ida 
on earth, and upon the fidelity with which his 
memory retained every feature of her face, 
every line of her figure, his thoughts by day, 
and his dreams by night, might have to depend 
for their texture until he should meet her in 
another world. 

The lingering looks that are the lover’s 
luxury were not for these fleeting seconds. 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. II5 

His gaze burned upon her face and played 
around her form like lightning. He grudged 
the instantaneous muscles of the eye the time 
they took to make the circuit of her figure. 

But when, as on that other night, she came 
close up to him and smiled upon him, time 
and circumstance were instantly forgotten, and 
he fell into a state of enchantment in which 
will and thought were inert. 

He was aroused from it by an extraordinary 
change that came over her. She started and 
shivered slightly in every limb. The recog- 
nition faded out of her eyes and gave place to 
a blank bewilderment. 

Then came a turning of her head from side 
to side, while, with dilated eyes, she explored 
the dim recesses of the room with the startled 
expression of an awakened sleep-walker. She 
half turned toward the cabinet and made an 
undecided movement in that direction, and 
then, as if the invisible cord that drew her 
thither had broken, she wavered, stopped, and 


Il6 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

seemed to drift toward the opposite corner of 
the room. 

At that moment there was a gasp from the 
cabinet. 

Dr. Hull leaped to his feet and sprang 
toward it, at the same time, by a turn of the 
stopcock by his side, setting the gas in both 
rooms at full blaze. 

Alta, with a loud scream, rushed after him, 
and Miss Ludington and Paul followed them. 

The pupils of their eyes had been dilated to 
the utmost in order to follow the movements 
of the apparition in the nearly complete dark- 
ness, and the first effect of the sudden blaze 
of gaslight was to dazzle them so completely 
that they had actually to grope their way to 
the cabinet. 

The scene in the little apartment of the 
medium was a heart-rending one. 

Mrs. Legrand’s body and lower limbs lay on 
the sofa, which v/as the only article of furniture, 
and Dr. Hull was in the act of lifting her head 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. iij 

from the floor to which it had fallen. Her 
eyes were half open, and the black rings 
around them showed with ghastly plainness 
against the awful pallor which the rest of her 
face had taken on. One hand was clenched. 
The other was clutching her bodice, as if in the 
act of tearing it open. A little foam flecked 
the blue lips. 

Alta threw herself upon her mother’s body, 
sobbing, " O mamma, wake up ! do ! do ! ” 

” Is she dead?” asked Miss Ludington, in 
horrified accents. 

" I don’t know ; I fear so. I warned her ; I 
told her it would come. But she would do 
it,” cried the doctor incoherently, as he tried 
to feel her pulse with one hand while he 
tore at the fastenings of her dress with the 
other. He set Paul at work chafing the hands 
of the unsconscious woman, while Miss Lud- 
ington sprinkled her face and chest with ice- 
water from a small pitcher that stood in a 
corner of the cabinet, and the doctor himself 


Il8 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

endeavored in vain to force some of the contents 
of a vial through her clenched teeth. ” It is of 
no use,’’ he said, finally; "she is past help, — 
she is dead !” 

At this Miss Ludington and Paul stood aside, 
and Alta, throwing herself upon her mother’s 
form, burst into an agony of tears. " She was 
all I had,” she sobbed. 

"Had Mrs. Legrand friends?” asked Miss 
Ludington, conscience-stricken with the thought 
that she had indirectly been in part responsible 
for this terrible event. 

" She had friends, who will look after Alta,” 
said Dr. Hull. 

Their assistance being no longer needed, Miss 
Ludington and Paul turned from the sad scene 
and stepped forth from the cabinet into the 
back parlor. 

The tragedy which they had just witnessed 
had to a great extent driven from their thoughts 
the events of the seance which it had broken off 
so abruptly. The impression left on their 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, I19 

minds was that the spirit-form of Ida had 
vanished in the blinding flood of gas-light 
through which they had groped their way to 
the cabinet on hearing the death-rattle of the 
medium. 

But now, in the remotest corner of the room, 
toward which they had last seen the form of 
the spirit drifting, there stood a young girl. 
She was bending forward, shielding her eyes 
with her right hand from the flaring gas, as 
she peered curiously about the room, her whole 
attitude expressive of complete bewilderment. 

It was Ida; but what a change had passed 
upon her ! This was no pale spirit, counter- 
feiting for a few brief moments, with the aid of 
darkness, the semblance of mortal flesh, but an 
unmistakable daughter of earth. Her bosom 
was palpitating with agitation, and, instead 
of the lofty serenity of a spirit, her eyeb 
expressed the trouble of a perplexed girl who 
is fast becoming frightened. 

As Paul and Miss Ludington stepped forth 


120 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


from the cabinet she fixed upon them a pair 
of questioning eyes. There was not a particle 
of recognition in their expression. Presently 
she spoke. Her voice was a mezzo-soprano, 
low and sweet, but just now sharpened by an 
accent of apprehension. 

"Where am I?*' she asked. 

After a moment, during which their brains 
reeled with an amazement so utter that they 
doubted the evidence of their senses, — doubted 
even their own existence and identities, there 
had simultaneously flashed over the minds 
of Paul and Miss Ludington the explanation of 
what they beheld. 

The prodigy, the theoretical possibility of 
which they had discussed after the seance of 
the week before, and scarcely thought of since, 
had come to pass. Dr. Hull had proved 
wrong, and Paul had proved right. A medium 
had died during a materialization, and the 
materialized spirit had succeeded to her vitality, 
and was alive as one of them. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


I2I 


It was no longer the spirit of Ida, knowing 
them by a spirit's intuition, which was before 
them, but the girl Ida Ludington, whose curious, 
unrecognizing glance testified to her ignorance 
of aught which the Hilton school-girl of forty 
years ago had not known. 

It was with an inexpressible throb of exul- 
tation, after the stupor of their first momentary 
astonishment, that they comprehended the 
miracle by which in the moment when the hope 
of ever beholding Ida again had seemed taken 
from them, had restored her not only to their 
eyes, but to life. But how should they accost 
her, how make themselves known to her, 
how go about even to answer the question 
she had asked without terrifying her with new 
and deeper mysteries? 

While they stood dumb, with hearts yearn- 
ing toward her, but powerless to think of words 
with which to address her. Dr. Hull, hearing 
the sound of her voice, stepped out from the 
cabinet. At the sight of Ida he started back 


122 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


astounded, and Paul heard him exclaim under 
his breath, ” I never thought of this ! '' 

Then he laid his hand on Paul’s arm and said, 
in an agitated whisper, ”You were right. It 
has happened as you said. My God, what can 
we say to her? ” 

Meanwhile Ida was evidently becoming 
much alarmed at the strange looks bent upon 
her. "Perhaps, sir,” she said, addressing Dr. 
Hull, with an appealing accent, "you will tell 
me how I came in this place?” 

Then ensued an extraordinary scene of expla- 
nation, in which, seconding one another’s efforts, 
striving to hit upon simpler analogies, plainer 
terms, Paul, the doctor, and Miss Ludington 
sought to make clear to this waif from eternity, 
so strangely stranded on the shores of Time, the 
conditions and circumstances under which she 
had resumed an earthly existence. 

For a while she only grew more terrified at 
their explanations, appearing to find them 
totally unintelligible, and, though her fears 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


123 


were gradually dissipated by the tenderness of 
their demeanor, her bewilderment seemed to 
increase. For a long time she continued to 
turn her face, with a pathetic expression of 
mental endeavor, from one to another, as they 
addressed her, only to shake her head slowly 
and sadly at last. 

” I seem to have lost myself,'^ she said, press- 
ing her hand to her forehead. " I do not un- 
derstand anything you say.” 

” It is a hard matter to understand,” replied 
Dr. Hull. "Understanding will come laten 
Meanwhile look in at the door of this room 
and you will see the body of the woman to 
whose life you have succeeded. Then you will 
believe us though you do not understand us.” 

As he spoke he indicated the door of the 
cabinet. 

Ida stepped thither and looked in, recoiling 
with a sharp cry of horror. The terror in her 
face was piteous, and in a moment Miss Lud- 
ington was at her side, supporting and soothing 


124 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


her. Sobbing and trembling Ida submitted un- 
resistingly to her ministrations, and even rested 
her head on Miss Ludington’s shoulder. 

The golden hair brushed the gray locks ; the 
full bosom heaved against the shrunken breast 
of age ; the wrinkled, scarred, and sallow face of 
the old woman touched the rounded cheek of 
the girl. 

Fully as Paul believed that he had realized 
the essential and eternal distinction between the 
successive persons who constitute an indi- 
viduality, he grew dizzy with the sheer wonder 
of the spectacle as he saw age thus consoling 
youth, and reflected upon the relation of these 
two persons to each other. 

Presently Ida raised her head and said, ” It 
may be as you say. My mind is all confused. 
I cannot think now. Perhaps I shall understand 
it better after a while.’’ 

” If you will come home with me now,” said 
Miss Ludington, "before you sleep I will con- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


125 


vince you what we*are to each other. Will you 
come with me? '' 

"Oh, yes!’' exclaimed the girl. "Let us 
go. Let us leave this awful place;" and she 
glanced with a shudder at the door of the 
cabinet. 

A few moments later the house of death had 
been left behind, and Miss Ludington's carriage, 
with its three passengers, was rolling home- 
wards. 

Before leaving, Miss Ludington had told Dr. 
Hull that he might command her so far as any 
pecuniary assistance should be needed either with 
reference to the funeral or in connection with 
providing for Alta. She said that it would be a 
relief to her to be allowed to do anything she 
could. Dr. Hull thanked her and said that, as 
Mrs. Legrand had friends in the city, it would 
probably be unnecessary to trouble her. If for 
no other purpose, however, he said that he 
should possibly communicate with her hereafter 
with a view to informing himself as to the future 


126 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


of the young lady who had that night assumed 
the earth-life which his dear friend, Mrs. Le- 
grand, had laid aside. 

It was an incident of this extraordinary 
situation that Miss Ludington found herself at 
disadvantage even in expressing the formal 
condolence she proffered. With Ida before 
her eyes it was impossible that she should 
honestly profess to deplore the event, however 
tragical, which had brought her back to earth. 
As for Paul he said nothing at all. 

The rattling of the wheels on the stony 
pavement was enough of itself to make con- 
versation difficult in the carriage, even if it 
would otherwise have flowed easily in a com- 
pany so strangely assorted. As the light of 
the street lamps from time to time flashed in at 
the windows Paul saw that Ida's face continued 
to wear the look of helpless daze which it had 
assumed from the moment that the sight of 
the dead woman in the cabinet had convinced 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


127 


her that she could not trust her own knowledge 
as to her relations to those about her. 

But when at last the carriage rolled through 
the gates of Miss Ludington’s estate, and the 
houses of the mimic village began to glance 
by, her manner instantly changed. With an 
exclamation of joyful surprise, she put her 
head out at the window, and then looking 
back at them, cried, delightedly, "Why, it’s 
Hilton ! You have brought me home ! There’s 
our house ! ” No sooner had she alighted than 
she ran up the walk to the door, and tried to 
open it. Paul, hurrying after, unlocked it, and 
she burst in, while he and Miss Ludington fol- 
lowed her, wondering. 

The servants had gone to bed, leaving the 
lower part of the house dimly lighted. Ida 
hurried on ahead from room to room with the 
confident step of one whose feet knew every 
turning. It was evident that she needed no 
one to introduce her there. 

When Miss Ludington and Paul followed her 


128 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


into the sitting-room, she was standing before 
her own picture in an attitude of utter astonish- 
ment. 

^Where did they get that picture of me ? ” 
she demanded. ” I never had a picture 
painted.’’ 

For a few moments there was no reply. 
Those she addressed were engrossed in com- 
paring the portrait with its original. The 
resemblance was striking enough, but it was 
no wonder that after once seeing the living 
Ida, Paul had found the canvas stiff and hard 
and lifeless. 

” No,” said Miss Ludington, ” you never had 
a picture painted. It was not till many years 
after you had left the world that this picture 
was painted. It was enlarged from this por- 
trait of you. Do you remember it?” and, 
taking the locket containing the ivory portrait 
of Ida from her neck where she had worn it so 
many years, she opened and gave it to the girl. 

” Why, it is my ivory portrait ! ” exclaimed 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


129 


Ida. "How did you come by it? What do 
you mean about my leaving the world? Some- 
thing strange has happened to me, I know, 
but did I die? I don’t remember dying. Oh, 
can’t somebody explain what has happened 
to me?” 

The dazed look which had disappeared from 
her face since her recognition of the village 
and the homestead had come back, and her 
last words were a bitter cry that went to the 
hearts of the listeners. 

Now, all the time they had been in the car- 
riage, Paul had been trying to think of some 
mode of setting her relationship to Miss Lud- 
ington in a light so clear that she must compre- 
hend it, for it was evident that the confused ex- 
planations at Mrs. Legrand’s had availed little, 
if anything, to that end. Unless this could be 
done she seemed likely to remain indefinitely in 
this dazed mental state, which must be so 
exquisitely painful to her, and was scarcely 
less so to them. 


130 


MISS LUDINGT0N\S SISTER. 


” If you will listen to me patiently/' he said, 
”I will try to explain. You know that some 
strange thing has happened to you, and you 
must expect to find the explanation as strange 
as the thing itself ; but it is not hard to under- 
stand." 

Ida's eyes were fixed on him with the ex- 
pression of one listening for her life. 

” Do you remember being a little girl of nine 
or ten years old? " he asked. 

" Oh, yes ! " she answered. ”I remember that 
perfectly well." 

"You are now a young woman," he went 
on. "Where is that little girl whom you 
remember? What has become of her?" 

" Why, I don't know," replied Ida. " I sup- 
pose she is somewhere in me." 

" But you don't look like a little girl, or think 
or act or feel like one. How can she be in 
you?" 

"Where else could she be? " replied Ida. 

" Oh, there is no lack of room for her/’ said 


MISS LVDINGTON'S SISTER, 131 

Paul; ''the universe is big enough for all the 
souls that ever lived in it. Suppose, now, you 
believed her to be still alive as a spirit, just as 
she was, still alive somewhere in the land of 
spirits, not transformed into the young lady 
that you are at all, you understand, for that 
would only be another way of saying that she 
was dead, but just as she was, a child, with a 
child’s loves, a child’s thoughts, a child’s feel- 
ings, and a child’s face, — can you suppose such 
a thing, just as an effort of imagination?” 

"Oh, yes!” said Ida; " I can suppose that.” 

"Well, then,” said Paul, "suppose also that 
you remembered this little girl very tenderly, 
and longed to look on her face again, although 
knowing that she was a spirit now. Sup- 
pose that you went to a woman having a 
mysterious power to call up the spirits of the 
departed, and suppose that she called up the 
spirit of this child self of yours, and that you 
recognized it, and suppose that just at that 
moment the woman died, and her earthly life 


132 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


was transferred to the spirit of the child, so that 
instead of being a spirit, she became again a 
living child, but unable to recognize you who 
loved her so well, because when she lived on 
earth, you, of course, had not yet come into 
existence. Suppose you brought this child 
home with you ” — 

"What do you mean? ” interrupted Ida, with 
dilating eyes. ''Am I ” — 

"You are to that woman,'' broke in Paul, in- 
dicating Miss Ludington, "what the child 
would have been to you. You are bound to 
her by the same tie by which that little girl 
would have been bound to you. She remem- 
bers and loves you as you would remember and 
love that child ; but you do not know her any 
more than that child would know you. You 
both share the name of Ida Ludington, accord- 
ing to the usage of men as to names; but I 
think there is no danger of your being con- 
founded with each other, either in your own 
eyes or those of lookers-on." 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER 


133 


Ida had at last comprehended. The piercing 
look, expressive of mingled attraction and re- 
pulsion, which she fixed upon Miss Ludington, 
left no doubt of that. It implied alarm, mistrust, 
and something that was almost defiance, yet 
with hints of a possible tenderness. 

It was such a look as a daughter, stolen from 
her cradle and grown to maidenhood among 
strangers, might fix upon the woman claiming 
to be her mother, except that not only was 
Miss Ludington a stranger to Ida, but the 
relation which she claimed to sustain to her 
was one that had never before been realized 
between living persons on earth, however it 
might be in heaven. 

" Do you understand? '' said Paul. 

"I — think — I — do. But how — strange 
— it is ! she replied, in lingering tones, her 
gaze continuing to rest, as if fascinated, upon 
Miss Ludington. 

The latter’s face expressed a great elation, an 
impassioned tenderness held in check through 
fear of terrifying its object. 


134 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


” I do not wonder it seems strange,’’ she said, 
very softly. "You have yet no evidence as to 
who I am. I remember you, — oh, how well ! — 
but you cannot remember me, nor is there any 
instinct answering to memory by which you 
can recognize me. You have a right to require 
that I should prove that I am what I claim to 
be ; that I am also Ida Ludington ; that I am 
your later self. Do not fear, my darling. I 
shall be able to convince you very soon.” 

She made Ida sit down, and then went to an 
ancient secretary, that stood in a corner of the 
room, and unlocked a drawer, the key to which 
she always carried on her person. 

Paul remembered from the time he was a 
little boy seeing her open this drawer on 
Sunday afternoons and cry over the keepsakes 
which it contained. 

She took out now a bundle of letters, a piece 
of ribbon, a locket, a bunch of faded flowers, 
and a few other trifles, and brought them to 
Ida. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


135 


Paul left the room on tiptoe. This was a 
scene where a third person, one might almost 
say a second person, would be an interloper. 

When, a long time after, he returned, Miss 
Ludington was sitting in the chair where Ida 
had been sitting, smiling and crying, and the 
girl, with eyes that shone like stars, was bend- 
ing over her, and kissing the tears away. 

The night was now almost spent, and the 
early dawn of midsummer, peering through the 
windows, and already dimming the lights, 
warned them that the day would soon be at 
hand. 

"You shall have your own bedroom,” said 
Miss Ludington. The face of the old lady 
was flushed, and her high-pitched and tremu- 
lous voice betrayed an exhilaration like that 
of intoxication. "You will excuse me for 
having cluttered it up with my things; to- 
morrow I will take them away. You see I 
had not dared hope you would come back 
to me. I had expected to go to you.” 


136 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


” I and you — you and 1.’' The girl repeated 
the words after her, slowly, as if trying to 
grasp their full meaning as she uttered them. 
Then a sudden terror leaped into her eyes, and 
she cried, shudderingly : ”Oh, how strange 
it is ! ” 

"You do not doubt it? You do not doubt 
it still?” exclaimed Miss Ludington, in an- 
guished tones. 

"No, no!” said the girl, recovering herself 
with an evident effort. " I cannot doubt it. I 
do not,” and she threw her arms about Miss 
Ludington's neck in an embrace in which, 
nevertheless, a subtle shrinking still mingled 
with the impulse of tenderness which had 
overcome it. 

When presently Miss Ludington and Ida 
went upstairs together, the latter, with eager, 
unhesitating step, led the way through a com- 
plexity of roundabout passages, and past 
many other doors, to that of the chamber 
which had been the common possession of 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


137 


the girl and the woman. Miss Ludington fol- 
lowed her, wondering, yet not wondering. 

" It seems so strange to see you so familiar 
with this house/' she said, with a little hys- 
terical laugh, "and yet, of course, I know it 
is not strange." 

"No," replied the girl, looking at her with 
a certain astonishment, " I should think not. 
It would be strange, indeed, if I were not fa- 
miliar here. The only strange thing is to 
feel that I am not at home here, that I am 
a guest in this house." 

"You are not a guest;" exclaimed Miss 
Ludington, hurriedly, for she saw the dazed 
look coming again into the girl’s eyes. "You 
shall be mistress here. Paul and I ask nothing 
better than to be your servants." 

To pass from the waking to the dreaming 
state is in general to exchange a prosaic and 
matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic im- 
probabilities ; but it is safe to assume that 
the three persons who fell asleep beneath 


138 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


Miss Ludington’s roof that morning, just as 
the birds began to twitter, encountered in 
dreamland no experiences so strange as 
those which they had passed through with 
their eyes open the previous evening. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


139 


CHAPTER IX. 

'T^HE day following, Paul was downstairs 
before either Ida or Miss Ludington. 
He was sitting on the piazza, which was con- 
nected with the sitting-room by low windows 
opening like doors, when he heard a scream, 
and Ellen, the housemaid, who had been 
busy in the sitting-room, ran out upon the 
piazza with a face like a sheet. 

"WhaPs the matter?’’ he demanded. 

” Sure I saw a ghost ! ” gasped Ellen. '' I 
was on a chair dusting the picture, as I al- 
ways does mornings, an’ I looked up, an’ 
there in the door stood the very same girl 
that’s in the picture, kind of smiling like. 
And so I give a yell an’ run.” 

As she spoke Ida stepped out upon the 
piazza, and precipitately sheltering herself be- 


140 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


hind Paul, Ellen whispered, " Sure there she 
is now ! ” 

On seeing that instead of sharing her terror 
he cordially greeted the ghost, the girl’s 
face showed such comical^ bewilderment that 
Ida smiled and Paul laughed outright. 

'^This is not a ghost, Ellen. This lady is 
Miss Ida Ludington, a relative of Miss Luding- 
ton’s, who came to live here last night.” 

" I hope ye’ll not mind me takin’ ye for a 
ghost, miss,” said Ellen, confusedly ; ” but 
sure ye are the livin’ image of the picture, 
and me not knowin’ anybody was in the house 
more than the family ; ” and she disappeared 
to tell her story in the kitchen. 

Ida’s appearance was noticeably calmer 
than the night before. There was, indeed, 
no indication of excitement in her manner. 
Paul inquired how she had slept. 

” I should think you might have had strange 
dreams,” he said. 

”I did not dream at all. I slept soundly,’^ 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 14T 

she replied. " But this morning when I woke 
up and recognized the familiar features of 
the room I have always slept in, — the same 
books, the same pictures, the furniture just 
as ever, — I had to sit down a long time to 
collect my thoughts and remember what had 
happened. I could remember it well enough, 
but to realize it was very hard. And then, 
when I went to the window and looked out 
and saw the meeting-house and the school- 
house and the neighbors’ houses, just where 
I have seen them from that window all my 
life since I was a baby, I had to sit down 
and think it all over again before I could 
believe that I was not in Hilton, and last 
night all a dream.” 

She spoke in a low, even tone, which was 
so evidently the result of an effort at self- 
control, that it impressed Paul more than any 
display of mental perturbation would have done. 

At this moment Miss Ludington appeared 
on the piazza with a white, excited face. 


142 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


which, however, as soon as she saw Ida, be- 
came all smiles. 

She had scarcely slept at all. The thought 
had kept her awake that Ida might vanish 
as mysteriously as she had come, and be 
gone at morning. From sheer weariness, 
however, she had at last fallen into a doze. 
On awaking she had gone to call Ida, and 
finding her chamber empty, had hurried down- 
stairs full of apprehension. 

Immediately after breakfast Miss Luding- 
ton, to whom Ellen’s mistake, if mistake it 
could be called, had been related, took Ida 
upstairs and made her exchange her white 
dress of the fashion of half a century before 
for one of her own, in order that her appear- 
ance might excite less remark among the 
servants pending the obtaining of a suitable 
wardrobe from the city. 

There was another consideration which made 
the change of costume not only desirable, but 
necessary. 


M/SS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


143 


Ida’s dress, which had not seemed the night 
before, to casual examination, to differ from 
other cloth, had begun to crumble away in 
a very curious manner. The texture seemed 
strangely brittle and strengthless. It fell apart 
at a touch, and was reduced to a fine powder 
under the pressure of the fingers. She could 
not possibly have worn it even one day. 

The dress of Miss Ludington’s for which 
she exchanged it, had been made for that lady 
when considerably stouter than at present, but 
was with difficulty enlarged sufficiently for the 
full figure of the girl. Like all but the latest 
of Miss Ludington’s dresses, it was of deepest 
black, and, strikingly beautiful as Ida had been 
in white, the funereal hue set off the delicacy 
of her complexion, the pure expression of her 
face, and the golden lustre of her hair, like 
fresh revelations. 

Paul was left pretty much to himself during 
the day. A large part of it w’as spent by 
the ladies in an upstairs chamber, which Miss 


144 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


Ludington had devoted to a collection of me- 
mentos of the successive periods of her life 
from infancy. 

” Come/’ she had said to Ida. " I want to 
introduce you to the rest of the family. I 
want to make you acquainted with the other 
Miss Ludingtons who have borne the name 
between your time and mine.” 

Having been an only child, Miss Luding- 
ton’s garments, toys, school books, and other 
belongings had not been handed down to"^ 
younger brothers and sisters, and eventually 
to destruction. It had been an easy matter to 
preserve them, and, consequently, the collection 
was large and curious, including samples of 
the wardrobe appertaining to every epoch, 
from the swaddling-clothes of the infant to a 
black gown of the last year. 

After the period of youth, however, which 
Ida represented, the number and interest of 
the mementos rapidly decreased, and for many 
years had consisted of nothing more than a 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


145 


few dresses and a collection of photographs, 
one or two for each year, arranged in order. 
They numbered not less than fifty in all and 
covered thirty-seven years, from a daguerreotype 
of Miss Ludington at the age of twenty-five 
to a photograph taken the last month. Be- 
tween these two pictures there was not enough 
resemblance to suggest to a casual observer 
that they were pictures of the same individual. 

To trace the gradual process of change from 
year to year, during the intervening period, was 
an employment which never lost its pensive 
fascination for Miss Ludington. For each of 
these faces, with their so various expressions, 
represented a person possessing a peculiar 
identity and certain incommunicable qualities, 
— a person a little different from any one of 
those who came before or after her, and from 
any other person who ever lived on earth. 

As now the gray head and the golden head 
bent together over one picture after another. 
Miss Ludington related all she could remember 


146 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


of the history and personal peculiarities of the 
original. 

" There is, really, not much to say about 
them,’’ she said. ” They lived very quiet, un- 
eventful lives, and to anybody but^us would, 
doubtless, seem entirely uninteresting persons. 
All wore black dresses, and had sad faces, 
and all found in their thoughts of you the 
source at once of their only consolation and 
their keenest sorrow. For they fully believed, 
— think of it ! — fully and unquestioningly be- 
lieved that you were dead; more hopelessly 
dead than if you were in your grave, dead, with 
no possibility of resurrection.” 

'' This is the one,” she said, presently, as she 
took up the picture of a woman of thirty-five, 
”who had the fortune left to her, which has 
come down to me. I want you to like her. 
Next to you I think more of her than I do 
of any of the rest. It was she who cut loose 
froqi the old life at Hilton which had become 
so sour and sad, and built this new Hilton here, 


MISS LUDINGTON’S SISTER. 


147 


where life has been so much calmer, and on 
the whole, happier, than it had got to be at 
home. It was she who had the portrait of 
you painted which is downstairs.” 

Ida took up a picture of the Miss Ludington 
of twenty-six or seven. 

" Tell me something about her,” she said. 
"What kind of a person was she?” 

The elder woman’s manner, when she saw 
what picture it was that Ida had taken up, 
betrayed a marked embarrassment, and at first 
she made no reply. 

Noticing her confusion and hesitation, Ida 
said, softly, "Don’t tell me if it is anything 
you don’t like to speak of. I do not care to 
know it.” 

" I will tell you,” replied Miss Ludington, 
with determination. "You have as good a 
right to know as I have. She cannot blame me 
for telling you. She knows your secrets as I 
do, and you have a right to know hers. She 
had a little escapade. You must not be too 


148 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

hard on her. It was the outcome of the des- 
perate dulness and life-weariness that came 
over her with the knowledge that youth and its 
joys were past, leaving nothing in their place. 
The calm and resignation to a lonely existence, 
empty of all that human hearts desire, which 
came in after years, she could not yet com- 
mand. Oh, if you could imagine, as I remem- 
ber, the bitterness of that period, you would not 
be too hard upon her for anything she might 
have done ! But, really, it was nothing very 
bad. People would not call it so, even if it had 
ever become known.” And then, with blushing 
cheeks and shamed eyes. Miss Ludington 
poured into Ida’s ears a story that would have 
disappointed any one expectant of a highly 
sensational disclosure, but which stood out in 
her memory as the one indiscretion of an 
otherwise blameless life. That she imparted it 
to Ida was the most striking evidence she 
could have given of the absolute community of 
interests which she recognized as existing be- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


149 


tween them. She was greatly comforted when 
Ida, instead of appearing shocked, declared that 
she sympathized with the culprit more than she 
blamed her, and that her misconduct was venial. 

" I suppose,’' said Miss Ludington, " every 
one, in looking back upon their past selves, 
sees some whom they condemn, and, perhaps, 
despise, and others whom they admire and 
sympathize with. And I confess I sympathize, 
with this poor girl. Those I don’t like are 
some whom I remember to have lacked soft- 
ness of heart, to have been sour and ungen- 
erous; these, for instance,” indicating certain 
pictures. ”But it is hardly fair,” she added, 
laughing, "for us two to get together and 
abuse the rest of the family, who, no doubt, if 
they were present, would have something to 
say for themselves, and some criticisms to 
offer on us; that is, on me. None of them 
would criticise you. You were the darling and 
the pride of us all.” 

If I do say it,” Miss Ludington presently 


150 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 

resumed, "we have been a very respectable lot 
on the whole. The Ida Ludingtons have been 
good babies, good children, good girls, good 
women, and, I hope, will prove to have been 
respectable old women. In the spirit land, 
when we all meet together, there will be no black 
sheep among us, nor even anybody that we 
shall need to send to Coventry. But I do not 
see why special affinities should not assert 
themselves there as here, and cliques form 
among us. You will belong to them all, of 
course; but next to you I know that I shall 
be fondest of that poor girl I told you about, of 
her and of the Ida Ludington who built this 
new Hilton thirty years ago.” 

" And now,” she said, as they finished 
looking over the pictures and talking about 
them, " I have introduced you to all who 
have borne our name from your day to mine. 
As to those who came before you, the baby 
Ida and the child Ida, you remember them 
even better than I do, no doubt. I would give 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 151 

anything if I had their pictures, but the blessed 
art of photography was not then invented. 
These keepsakes are all I have of them.” And 
taking Ida over to another part of the room, 
she showed her a cradle, several battered dolls, 
fragments of a child’s pewter tea-set, and a 
miscellaneous collection of toys. 

They took up and handled tenderly pairs of 
little shoes, socks nearly as long as one’s 
fingers, and baby dresses scarcely bigger than 
a man’s mittens. Lying near were the shoes, 
and gowns, and hoods, now grown a little larger, 
of the child, with the coral necklace, and first 
precious ornaments, the dog’s-eared spelling- 
books, and the rewards of merit, testifying of 
early school-days. 

” I can barely remember the baby and this 
-little girl,” said Miss Ludington, ” but I fancy 
they will be the pets of all the rest of us up 
there, don’t you? ” 

After Miss Ludington had showed Ida all the 
contents of the room, and they were about to 


152 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


leave it, she said to the girl, "And now what 
do you think of us other Ida Ludingtons, who 
have followed you, present company not ex- 
cepted? Confess that you think the ac- 
quaintances I have introduced to you were 
scarcely worth the making. You need not 
hesitate to say so; it is quite my own opinion. 
We have amounted to very little, taken alto- 
gether.’’ 

" Oh, no ! ” said Ida, quietly; " I do not think 
that ; I would not say that ; but your lives have 
all been so different from what I have always 
dreamed my life as a woman would be.” 

"You have a right to be disappointed in us,” 
said Miss Ludington. "We have, indeed, not 
turned out as you expected — as you had a 
right to expect.” But Ida would not admit in 
any derogatory sense that she was disappointed. 

"You are sweeter, and kinder, and gentler, 
than I supposed I ever could be,” she said ; 
" but you see, I thought, of course, I should be 
married, and have children, and that all would 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


IS3 


be so different from, what it has been ; but not 
that I should ever be better than you are, or 
nearly so sweet. Oh, no ! 

" Thank you, my darling ! ” said the old lady, 
kissing Ida’s hand, as if she were a queen who 
had conferred an order of merit upon her. " I 
think that to have to confess to their youth- 
ful selves their failures to fulfil their expecta- 
tions must be the hardest part of the Day of 
Judgment for old folks who have wasted their 
lives. All will not find so gentle a judge as 
mine.” 

Her eyes were full of happy tears. 

In the latter part of the afternoon they took 
a walk in the village, and Ida pressed her 
companion with a multitude of inquiries about 
the members of the families which had occu- 
pied the houses, forty and fifty years before, 
and what had since become of them ; to reply 
to which taxed Miss Ludington’s memory not 
a little. 

As they came to the school-house Ida ran on 


154 LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

ahead, and when her companion entered, was 
already seated in Miss Ludington’s old seat. 
Nothing perhaps could have brought home to 
the latter more strongly the nature of her 
relationship to Ida than to stand beside her as 
she sat in that seat. 

As they fell to talking of the scholars who 
had sat here and there. Miss Ludington began 
gently to banter Ida about this and that boyish 
sweetheart, and divers episodes connected with 
such topics. 

” This is unfair,’’ said the girl, smiling. " It 
is a very one-sided arrangement that you 
should remember all my secrets while I know 
none of yours. It is as if you had stolen my 
private journal.” 

A subtle coyness, an air of constraint, 
and of shy, curious observance, which had 
marked Ida’s manner toward Miss Ludington 
in the early part of the day, had noticeably 
given way under the influence of the latter’s 
blithe affectionateness, and it was with arms 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


I5S 


about each other's waists that the two sauntered 
back to the house, in the twilight. 

" I scarcely know what to call you,” said Ida. 
"For ‘me to call you Ida, as you call me, would 
be confusing, and, besides, you are so much 
older than I it would seem hardly fitting." 

Miss Ludington laughed softly. 

" On the score of respect, my darling, you 
need not hesitate," she said, " for it is you who 
are the elder Miss Ludington, and I the 
younger, in spite of my white hair. You are 
forty years older than I. It is I who owe you 
the respect due to years. You are right, 
however; it would be confusing for us to call 
each other by the same name, and still there 
is no word in human language that truly 
describes our relationship." 

" It seems to me it is more like that of sisters 
than any other," suggested Ida, with a certain 
timidity. 

Miss Ludington reflected a moment, and 
then exclaimed, delightedly : — 


156 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 

” Yes, we will call each other sister, for our 
relation is certainly a kind of sisterhood. We 
are, like sisters, not connected directly, but in- 
directly, through our relation to our common 
individuality, as if we were fruit borne by 
the same tree in different seasons. To be 
sure/' she added, regarding her blooming 
companion with a smile of tender admira- 
tion, " we can scarcely be said to look as 
much alike as sisters commonly do, but that 
is because there is not often a difference of 
more than forty years in the ages of sisters." 

And so it was agreed that they should call 
each other sister. 

Although it was but one day that these two 
had been known to each other, yet so naturally 
had Ida seemed drawn toward Miss Ludington, 
and so spontaneous had been the outflow of the 
latter's long-stored tenderness toward the girl, 
that they were already like persons who have 
been bosom friends and confidants for years. 

In this wonderfully rapid growth of a close 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


157 


and tender intimacy, Miss Ludington exult- 
ingly recognized the heart's testimony to the 
reality of the mystic tie between them. 

So fit and natural had the presence of Ida 
under her roof already come to seem, that she 
found herself half-forgetting, at times, the 
astounding and tragic circumstances to which 
it was due. 

Absorbed in the wonder and happiness of 
her own experience, Miss Ludington had 
barely given a thought to Paul during the day. 
Plaving been constantly with Ida she had 
not, indeed, seen him, save at table, and had 
failed to take note of his woebegone appear- 
ance. At any other time it would have 
aroused her solicitude ; but it was not strange 
that on this day she should have had no 
thought save for herself and her other self. 

It had, indeed, been a day of strangely 
mingled emotions for Paul. 

Supposing a lover were separated from his 
mistress, and that the privilege of being with 


158 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


her, and spending his days in sight of her, were 
offered him by some fairy, but only on condi- 
tion that all memory of him should be blotted 
from her mind, and that she should see in 
him merely a stranger, — is it probable, how- 
ever great might be the desire of such a lover 
to behold his mistress, that he would consent 
to gratify it on these terms? 

But it was with Paul as if he had done just 
this. That the sight of his idol should have 
fallen to his lot on earth ; that he should hear 
the sound of her voice, and breathe the same 
air with her, was, on the one hand, a felicity so 
undreamed of, a fortune so amazing, that he 
sometimes wondered how he could enjoy it and 
still retain his senses. 

But when he met her, and she returned his 
impassioned look with a mere smile of civil 
recognition; when he spoke to her and she 
answered him in a tone of conventional polite- 
ness, — he found it more than he could bear. 

The eyes of her picture were kinder than 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


159 


hers. He had, at least, been able to comfort 
himself with the belief that, as a spirit, she had 
known of his love, and had accepted it. Now, 
by her incarnation, while his eyes had gained 
their desire, his heart had lost its consolation. 

His condition of mind rapidly became des- 
perate. He could not bear to be in Ida’s 
presence. Her friendly, formal accent was un- 
endurable to him. Their blank, unrecognizing 
expression, as they rested on him in mere 
kindliness, made her lovely eyes awful to him 
as a Gorgon’s. 

In the early evening he found Miss Luding- 
ton alone, and broke out to her: — 

"For God’s sake, can’t you help me? I shall 
go mad if you don’t ! ” 

" Why, what do you mean ? ” she exclaimed, 
in astonishment. 

"Don’t you see? ” he cried. " She does not 
know me. I have lost her instead of find- 
ing her. I, who have loved her ever since I was 
a baby, am no more than a stranger to her. 


l6o MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

Can’t you see how she looks at me? She has 
learned to know you, but I am a stranger to 
her.” 

"But how could she know you, Paul? She 
did not know me till it was explained to her. ” 

"I know,” he said. "I don’t blame her, but 
at the same time I cannot stand it. Can’t 
you help me with her? Can’t you tell her 
how I have loved her, so that she may under- 
stand that at least ? ” 

" Poor Paul ! ” said Miss Ludington, soothingly. 
" In my own happiness I had almost forgotten 
you. But I can see how hard it must be for 
you. I will help you. I will tell her all the 
story. O Paul! is she not beautiful? She will 
love you, I know she will love you when 
she hears it, and how happy you will be, — 
happier than any man ever was 1 I will go 
to her now.” 

And, leaving Paul vaguely encouraged by 
her confidence, she went to find Ida. 

She came upon her in the sitting-room, in- 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. l6l 

I 

tently pondering the picture above the fire- 
place. 

" I want to tell you a love-story, my sister,’’ 
she said. 

” Whose love-story ? ” asked Ida. 

" Your own.” 

"But I never had a love-story or a lover. 
Nobody can possibly know that better than 
you do.” 

" I will show you that you are mistaken,” 
said Miss Ludington, smiling. " No one ever 
had so fond or faithful a lover as yours. Sit 
down, and I will tell you your own love-story, 
for the strangest thing of all is that you do not 
know it yet.” 

Beginning with Paul’s baby fondness for her 
picture, she related to Ida the whole story of 
his love for her, which had grown with his 
growth, and, from a boyish sentiment, become 
the ruling passion of the man, blinding him to 
the charms of living women, and making him 
a monk for her sake. 


1 62 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

She described the effect upon him of the first 
suggestion that it might be possible to commu- 
nicate with her spirit, and how her presence on 
earth was due to the enthusiasm with which he 
had insisted upon making the attempt. 

Then she asked Ida to imagine what must 
be the anguish of such a lover on finding that 
she did not know him, — that he was nothing 
more than a stranger to her. She told her how, 
in his desperation, he had appealed to her to 
plead his case and to relate his story, that his 
mistress might, at least, know his love, though 
she might not be able to return it. 

Ida had listened at first in sheer wonder, but 
as Miss Ludington went on describing this great 
love, which all unseen she had inspired, to find 
awaiting her full-grown on her return to earth, 
her cheek began to flush, a soft smile played 
about her lips, and her eyes were fixed in ten- 
der revery. 

" Tell him to come to me,” she said, gently, 
as Miss Ludington finished. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 163 

When Paul entered, Ida was alone, standing 
in the centre of the room. . 

He threw himself at her feet, and lifted the 
hem of her dress to his lips. 

” Paul, my lover,’' she said softly. 

At this he seized her hand and covered it 
with kisses. She gently drew him to his feet. 
He heard her say, "Forgive me, Paul; I did 
not know.” 

Her warm breath mingled with his, and she 
kissed him on the lips. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


164 


CHAPTER X. 

TN the days that followed, Ida was the object 
of a devotion on the part of Miss Luding- 
ton and Paul which it would be inadequate 
to describe as anything less than sheer idolatry. 
Her experience was such as a goddess’s might 
be who should descend from heaven and take 
up her abode in bodily form among her wor- 
shippers, accepting in ^person the devotion 
previously lavished on her effigy. 

With Miss Ludington this devotion was the 
more intense as it was but a sublimed form of 
selfishness, like that of the mother’s to her 
child, whom she feels to be a part, and the 
choicest part, of her own life. The instinct of 
maternity, never gratified in her by the pos- 
session of children, asserted itself toward this 
radiant girl, whose being was so much closer 
to hers than even a child’s could be, whose 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. l6$ 

life was so wonderfully her own and yet not 
her own, that, in loving her, self-love became 
transfigured and adorable. She could not 
have told whether the sense of their identity 
or their difference were the sweeter. 

Her delight in the girl’s loveliness was a 
transcendent blending of a woman’s pleasure 
in her own beauty and a lover’s admiration 
of it. She had transferred to Ida all sense 
of personal identity excepting just enough to 
taste the joy of loving, admiring, and serving 
her. 

To wait upon her was her greatest happiness. 
There was no service so menial that she would 
not have been glad to perform it for her, and 
which she did not grudge the servants the 
privilege of rendering. The happiness which 
flooded her heart at this time was beyond 
description. It was not such a happiness as 
enabled her to imagine what that of heaven 
might be, but it was the happiness of heaven 
itself. 


1 66 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

As might be expected, the semi-sacredness 
attaching to Ida, as a being something more 
than earthly in the circumstances of her advent, 
lent a rare strain to Paul’s passion, 
y There is nothing sweeter to a lover than to 
feel that his mistress is of a higher nature and 
a finer quality than himself. With many lovers, 
no doubt, this feeling is but the delusion of a 
fond fancy, having no basis in any real su- 
periority on the part of the loved one. But 
the mystery surrounding Ida would have tinged 
the devotion of the most prosaic lover with 
an unusual sentiment of awe. 

Paul compared himself with those fortunate 
youths of antiquity who were beloved by the 
goddesses of Olympus, and in whose hearts 
religious adoration and the passion of love 
blended in one emotion. 

Ever since that night when her heart had 
been melted by the story of his love, Ida had 
treated him with the graciousness which a 
maiden accords to an accepted lover. But far 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


167 


from claiming the privileges which he might 
apparently have enjoyed, it seemed to him pre- 
sumption enough and happiness enough to 
kiss her dress, her sleeve, a tress of her hair, 
or, at most, her hand, and to dream of her lips. 

The dazed appearance, as of one doubtful 
of herself and all about her, which Ida had 
worn the night when she was brought home, 
had now wholly passed away. But a certain 
pensiveness remained. Her smiles were the 
smiles of affection, not of gayety, and there 
was always a shadow in her eyes. It was as 
if the recollection of the mystery from which 
her life had emerged, were never absent from 
her mind. 

Still she took so much pleasure in her daily 
drives with Miss Ludington that the latter 
ordered a pony chaise for her special use, and 
when Paul arranged a croquet set on the village 
green she permitted him to teach her the game, 
and even showed some interest in it. 

When the first dresses which had been or- 


1 68 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

dered for her came home, she was delighted 
as any girl must have been, for they were 
the richest and most beautiful fabrics that 
money could buy; but Miss Ludington seemed, 
of the two, far the more pleased. 

For herself she had cared nothing for dress. 
In forty years she had not given a thought 
to personal adornment, but Ida’s toilet be- 
came her most absorbing preoccupation. On 
her account she became a close student of 
the fashion-papers, and but for the girl’s pro- 
tests would have bought her a new dress at 
least every day. 

She would have liked Ida to change her 
costume a dozen times between morning and 
evening, and asked no better than to serve 
as her dressing-maid. To brush and braid 
her shining hair, stealthily kissing it the while ; 
to array her in sheeny satins and airy muslins ; 
to hang jewels upon her neck, and clasp brace- 
lets upon her wrists, and to admire and caress 
the completed work of her hands, constituted 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 169 

an occupation which she would have liked to 
make perpetual. 

When Miss Ludington’s mother had died she 
had left to her daughter, then a young girl, 
all her jewels, including a rather fine set of 
diamonds. When one day Miss Ludington 
took the gems from the box in which they 
had been hidden away for half a lifetime, and 
hung them upon Ida, saying, " These are 
yours, my sister,” the girl protested, albeit 
with scintillating eyes, against the greatness 
of the gift. 

"Why, my darling, they are yours,” replied 
Miss Ludington. "I am not making you a 
gift. It was to you that mother, gave them. 
I only return you your own. When you left 
the world I inherited them fror you, and now 
that you have co '>ack : "turn them to 
you.” ' 

And so the ,irl as fj’ '/ keep them. 

Thus it hr 01. .e . ■ that before Ida had 

been in th : jotirie ck it was no longer as 


I/O 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


a mystery, or, at least, as an awe-inspiring mys- 
tery, but as an ineffably dear and precious 
reality, that her presence was felt. Had a 
stranger chanced to come there on a visit, at 
that time, he would doubtless have been 
struck with the fact that a young girl was 
the central figure of the household, around 
whom its other members revolved; but it is 
probable that this fact, in itself not unparalleled 
in American households, would have seemed 
to such an observer sufficiently explained by 
the unusual gentleness and beauty of the girl 
herself. The necessity of a supernatural ex- 
planation certainly would not have occurred 
to him. 

The servants had been merely informed that 
Ida was a relative of Miss Ludington’s, and 
though they were very curious as to what 
connection she might be, their speculations 
did not extend beyond the commonly recog- 
nized modes of relationship. The house- 
keeper, indeed, who had been in Miss Luding- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


171 


ton’s employ many years, and supposed she 
knew all about the family, thought it strange 
that she could recall no young lady relative 
answering to Ida’s description. But as she 
found that her most ingenious efforts entirely 
failed to extract any information on the subject 
from Miss Ludington, Paul, or Ida herself, she 
was obliged, like the rest, to accept the bare 
fact that the new-comer was Miss Ida Luding- 
ton, and that she was somehow related to Miss 
Ludington; a fact speedily supplemented by 
the discovery that to please Miss Ida was the 
surest way to the favor of Miss Ludington and 
Mr. Paul. 

On that score, however, there was no need 
of any special inducement, Ida’s sweet face, 
and gracious, considerate ways, having already 
made her a favorite with all who were attached 
to the household. 

It was ten days or a fortnight after Ida had 
been in the house that Miss Ludington re- 
ceived a letter from Dr. Hull, in which that 


172 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


gentleman said that he should do himself the 
honor of calling on her the following day. 

He said she might be interested to know that 
he had already received several communica- 
tions from Mrs. Legrand, through mediums, in 
which she had declared herself well content to 
have died in demonstrating so great a truth as 
that immortality is not individual, but personal. 
She considered herself to be most fortunate in 
that her death had not been a barren one, as 
most deaths are; but that, in dying, she had 
been permitted to become the second mother 
of another, and far brighter life than hers had 
been. She felt that she had made a grand bar- 
ter for her own earthly existence, which had 
been so sick and weary. 

The bulk of Dr. Hulks letter, which was 
quite a long one, consisted of further quotations 
from Mrs. Legrand’s communications. 

She said that she had been welcomed by a 
great multitude of spirits, who to her had owed 
the beginning of their recognition on earth, and 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


173 


that their joy over this discovery, which should 
bring consolation to many mournful mortals, 
as well as to themselves, was only equalled by 
their wonder that it had not been made years 
before. It appeared that, since intercourse 
between the two worlds had first begun, it had 
been the constant effort of the spirits to teach 
this truth to men ; but the stupid refusal of the 
latter to comprehend had till now baffled every 
attempt. How it had been possible that men 
who had reached the point of believing in 
immortality at all should be content to rest in 
the inadequate and preposterous conception 
that it only attached to the latest phase of the 
individual, was the standing wonder of the 
spirit world. 

It was as if one should throw away the con- 
tents of a cup of wine, and carefully preserve 
the dregs in the bottom. 

That so loose an association of personalities 
as the individual, and those personalities so 
utterly diverse, no two of them even alive at the 


174 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


same time, should have impressed even the most 
casual observer as a unit of being, — a single 
person, — was accounted a marvel by the angels. 
If men had believed all the members of a 
family to have but one soul among them, 
their mistake would have been more excusable, 
for the members of a family are, at least, alive 
at the same time, while the persons of an 
individual are not even that. 

Dr. Hull said that he had gathered from 
Mrs. Legrand’s communications that she had 
seen many things which would teach mortals 
not to grieve for their departed friends, as for 
shades exiled to a world of strangers. To such 
mourners she sent word that their own past 
selves, who have likewise vanished from the 
earth, are keeping their dear dead company in 
heaven. And far more congenial company to 
them are these past selves than their present 
selves would be, who, through years and 
changes since their separation, have often 
grown out of sympathy with the departed, as 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


1/5 


they will find when they shall meet them. 
The aged husband, who has mourned all his 
life the bride taken from him in girlhood, will 
find himself well-nigh a stranger to her, and his 
mourning to have been superfluous; for all 
these years his own former self, the husband of 
her youth, has borne her company. 

Dr. Hull said, in closing, that, as probably 
Miss Ludington would presume, his particular 
motive in making bold to break in upon her 
privacy was a desire, which he was sure she 
would not confound with vulgar curiosity, to 
see again the young lady who had succeeded 
to his friend's earthly life in so wonderful a 
manner, and to learn, what, if any, were the 
later developments in her case. He was pre- 
paring a book upon the subject, in which, 
of course without giving the true names, he 
intended to make the facts of the case known 
to the world. Its publication, he felt assured, 
would mark a new departure in spiritualism. 

Miss Ludington read the letter aloud to Ida 


176 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

and Paul, as all three sat together in the 
gloaming on the piazza. As Paul from time to 
time, during the reading, glanced at Ida he 
noticed that she kept her face averted. 

” I am glad,'’ said Miss Ludington, as she 
finished the letter, ” that Mrs. Legrand is 
happy. It is so hard to realize that about the 
dead. The feeling that our happiness was pur- 
chased by her death has been the only cloud 
upon it. And yet it would be strange indeed 
if she were not happy. As she says, she did 
not die a barren death, but in giving birth. 
And it was no tiny infant's existence, of doubt- 
ful value, that she exchanged her life for, but a 
woman's in the fulness of her youth and beauty. 
Such a destiny as hers never fell to a mother 
before." 

” Never before," echoed Paul, rising to his 
feet in an access of enthusiasm ; ” but who 

shall say that it may not often fall to the 
lot of women in the ages to come, as the 
relations between the worlds of men and 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


177 


of spirits, become more fully known? The 
dark and unknown path that Ida trod that 
night back to our world will, doubtless, in 
future times, become a beaten and lighted way.* 
This woman through whom she lives again did 
not die of her own choice ; but I do not find it 
incredible that many women will hereafter be 
found willing and eager to die as she did, to 
bring back to earth the good, the wise, the 
heroic, and beloved. The world will never 
need to lose its heroes then, for there will never 
lack ardent and devoted women to contend for 
such crowns of motherhood.” 

He stopped abruptly, for he had observed 
that Ida’s face betrayed acute distress. 

''Forgive me,” he said. "You do not like 
us to talk of this.” 

"I think I do not,” she replied, in a low 
voice, without looking up. " It affects me very 
strangely to think about it much. I would like 
to forget it if I could and feel- that I am like 
other people.” 


1/8 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

She had, in fact, shown a marked and increas- 
ing indisposition almost from the first to dis- 
cuss the events of that wonderful night at Mrs. 
Legrand’s. After having had the circumstances 
once fully explained to her, she had never since 
referred to them of her own accord. 

She apparently had the shrinking which any 
person, and especially a woman, would nat- 
urally have from the idea of being regarded as 
something abnormal or uncanny, and mingled 
with this was, perhaps, a certain sacred shame- 
facedness, at the thought that this most 
intimate and vital mystery of her second birth 
had been witnessed and was the subject of 
curious speculations. 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


179 


CHAPTER XI. 

' I ^HE ladies were out driving, the following 
afternoon, when Dr. Hull arrived, but 
Paul was at home. He brought out some 
cigars, and they made themselves comfortable 
on the piazza. 

Dr. Hull was full of questions about Ida: 
how she appeared; what relations had estab- 
lished themselves between Miss Ludington and 
her; whether she showed any memory what- 
ever of her disembodied state; whether the 
knowledge of the mystery involving her seemed 
in any way to affect her spirits or temper, or 
to set her apart in her own estimation from 
others, with many other acute and carefully 
considered queries calculated to elicit the facts 
of her mental and spiritual condition. 

" There is one point,’' said the doctor, ” about 
which I am particularly curious. How is it 


i8o 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


with her memory of her former life on earth? 
Does it break off suddenly, as if on some 
particular day or hour her spirit had made 
way for its successor, and passed away from 
earth ? '' 

” On the contrary,’’ said Paul, " she has in- 
timated, in talking over the past with Miss 
Ludington, that the memory of her life on 
earth is clear and precise during its earlier 
portions, but that toward the last it grows hazy 
and indistinct.” 

"Exactly,” broke in the doctor. "Just as 
if her personality had a little overlapped and 
melted at the edge into that which followed it. 
Yes, it is as I thought it might be. Youth, or 
childhood, or infancy, or any other epoch of 
life, does not abruptly cease and give place to 
another. Their souls are gradually withdrawn 
as the light is withdrawn from the sky at even- 
ing, and a space of twilight renders the 
transition from one to the other perceptible 
only in the result, not in the process. This I 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. l8l 

think is a view of the matter that is corrob- 
orated by the testimony of our own conscious- 
ness, don’t you, Mr. De Riemer?” 

” On the whole, yes,” replied Paul. ” And 
still, if she had said that the severing of her 
personality from that which succeeded it was 
sharp and clearly defined, so that up to a 
certain day, or even hour, her memory was 
full and distinct, and then became a blank, 
there are passages in my own -experience, and 
I think in that of many persons, which her 
statement would have made comprehensible. 
I think that to many, perhaps to all persons of 
reflective turn of mind, there come days, even 
hours, when they feel that they have suddenly 
passed from one epoch of life into another. 
A voice says in their hearts with unmistakable 
clearness, 'Yesterday I was young; to-day I 
am young no longer.’ There is also some- 
times a day, I think, when the middle-aged 
man becomes suddenly aware that he is old. 
Who shall deny the truth of these intuitions, 


i 82 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


or say that it is not in that very day and hour 
that the spirit of youth or of maturity takes its 
flight?^’ 

” By the way/’ said Dr. Hull, ” have you ever 
speculated on the probable number of the souls 
of an individual? It is an interesting question.” 

” I suppose that the number may greatly 
differ in different individuals,” replied Paul. 
” In individuals of many-sided minds and ver- 
satile dispositions, there are, perhaps, more 
distinct personalities than constitute an indi- 
vidual of less complex character. But how 
many in either case only God can tell. Who 
can say? It may be that with every breath 
which I expire a soul or spiritual impression of 
myself is sent forth. The universe is large 
enough even for that. Such may at least be the 
case in moments of special intensity, when we 
live, as we say, a year in an hour.” 

They smoked on awhile in silence. Presently * 
Paul said, '' When the world comes to recognize 
the composite character of the individual, that 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


183 


it is composed of not one, but many personsL 
a new department will be added to ethics,^ 
relating to the duties of the successive selves of 
an individual to one another. It will be recog-^^ 
nized on the one hand that it is the duty of a 
man to fulfil all reasonable obligations incurred 
by his past selves, on the same principle that a 
pious son fulfils the equitable obligations in- 
curred by a parent. This duty is, indeed, recog- 
nized to-day, although not on the correct basis. 
As regards the ethical relation of a man to the 
selves who succeed him, a wholly new idea will 
be introduced. It will be seen that the duty of 
' a man to lead a wise life, to be prudent, to 
make the most of his powers, to maintain a 
good name, is not a duty to himself, merely an 
enlightened selfishness, as it is now called, but a 
genuine form of altruism, a duty to others, as 
truly as if those others bore different names 
instead of succeeding to his name. It will be 
seen that a man’s duty to his later selves is 
like the duty of a father to his helpless children : 


1 84 LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

to provide for their inheritance, to see that he 
leaves them a sound body and a good name, if 
nothing more. It will be perceived that the 
man who is charitably called "his own worst 
enemy/' is not only no better but worse than if 
he were the enemy of his neighbors, because he 
is blasting coming lives that have a far nearer 
claim upon him than any neighbor can have.” 

" There will arise, also, in that day, I fancy,” 
pursued Paul, " some rather delicate questions 
as to how far a man may properly bind his 
future selves by pledges and engagements 
which he has no means of knowing will meet 
with their approval, and which may quite pos- 
sibly prove intolerable yokes to them.” 

"Ah ! ” exclaimed the doctor, "that is, indeed, 
an interesting point. And, meanwhile, I should 
say the intelligible discussion of these questions 
will involve a modification in grammatical 
usage. If we believe that our present selves 
are distinct persons from our past selves it is 
manifestly improper to use the first person in 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


185 


speaking of our past selves. Either the third 
person must be used, or some new grammatical 
form invented.'' 

"Yes," said Paul. "If entire accuracy is 
sought the first person cannot be properly em- 
ployed by any one in referring either to his past 
or his future selves, to what has been done 
or to what will be done by them." 

At this moment the carriage drew up before 
the house, and Paul helped the ladies out. 

Miss Ludington greeted Dr. Hull cordially, 
and stopped upon the piazza in hat and 
shawl to talk with him. But Ida merely 
bowed stiffly, with lowered, eyes, and passed 
within. 

Before they were called to tea Paul found 
an opportunity to tell the doctor how sensitive 
Ida was to any discussion of the mystery con- 
nected with her, and to suggest that at table 
any direct reference to the subject should be 
avoided. 

The expression of disappointment on Dr. 


1 86 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

Hull’s countenance seemed to indicate that he 
had anticipated thoroughly cross-questioning 
her in the interest of spiritual science ; but he 
said that he would regard Paul’s suggestion, 
and even admitted that it was, perhaps, natural 
she should feel as she did, although he had not 
anticipated it. 

At the table, therefore, Ida was spared any 
direct reference to herself as a phenomenon, 
and althotigh Dr. Hull talked of nothing but 
spiritualism and the immortality of past selves, 
it was in their broad and general aspects that 
the subjects were discussed. 

"Your nephew,” he said to Miss Ludington, 
" has evidently given much time and profound 
thought to these matters; and although I am 
an old man, and have been more interested in 
the spiritual then the material universe for 
these many years, I was glad of an opportunity 
to sit at his feet this afternoon.” 

Turning to Paul, he added, " What you 
w'ere saying about the possibility that souls. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


187 


or, at least, spiritual impressions, destined to 
eternity, are given forth by us constantly, as if 
at every breath, is wonderfully borne out in a 
passage from a communication I had from Mrs. 
Legrand yesterday, to which I meant to have 
alluded at the time you were speaking. She 
said that those who supposed that the spirit- 
land contained only one soul for every indi- 
vidual that had ever lived had no conception 
of its vastness, and that the stream of souls 
constantly ascending is like a thick mist rising 
from all the earth. The phrase struck me as 
strangely strong, but I can conceive now how 
she might have come to use it. 

” What is your conjecture, or have you none 
at all,*' he added, after a moment’s thought, 
still addressing Paul, ” as to the relation which 
will exist in the spirit-land among the several 
souls of the same individual?” 

” It seems to me,” said Paul, "that the souls 
of an individual, being contemporaneous over 
there, and all together in the eternal present. 


1 88 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 

will be capable of blending in a unity which 
here on earth, where one is gone before another 
comes, is impossible. The result of such a 
blending would be a being which, instead of 
shining with the single ray of a soul on earth, 
would blaze from a hundred facets simultane- 
ously. The word ” individual,” as applied here 
on earth, is a misuse of language. It is absurd 
to call that an individual which every hour 
divides. The earthly stage of human life is 
so small that there is room for but one of the 
persons of an individual upon it atone time. 
The past and future selves have to wait in the 
side scenes. But over there the stage is larger. 
There will be room for all at once. The idea 
of an individual, all whose personalities are 
contemporaneous, may there be realized, and 
such an individual would be, by any earthly 
measurement, a god. 

” But there are many individuals,” he pur- 
sued after a pause, ” of which we cannot 
imagine a blending of the successive persons to 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


be possible. There, for instance, are cases 
where there exist radical and bitter oppositions 
and differences of character, ' and propensity 
between the youth and the manhood of the 
individual. In the case of such ill-assorted 
personalities a divorce ex vinculo individui 
may be the only remedy, and, possibly, the 
parties to it may be sent back to earth, 
to take their chances of finding more congenial 
companions.^' 

Ida had not said a word during the time 
they had sat at table. She had, indeed, 
scarcely lifted her eyes from her plate. 

As they rose she challenged Paul to a 
game at croquet, for which the twilight left 
ample opportunity. 

Miss Ludington and Dr. Hull sat upon the 
piazza in full view of the players. 

" What do you call her?” he asked, abruptly, 
after a pause in their conversation. 

"Why, we call her Ida, of course,” replied 
Miss Ludington, with some surprise. "What 


190 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


else could we call her? Is not her name Ida 
Ludington? ’’ 

'' On my own account/* said Dr. Hull, " I 
should not have needed to ask you, because I 
am acquainted with the circumstances of the 
reassumption of her earthly life and name, but 
how would you introduce her to one who was 
not so acquainted, — to any one, in fact, besides 
yourself, your nephew, and myself?** 

” In the same way, I suppose,** replied Miss 
Ludington. 

” Precisely,** said the doctor ; ” but if they 
were acquainted with your family, or if they 
took any special interest in her, would they not 
want to know what was the nature of her rela- 
tionship to you? She could not be your 
daughter. They would ask what was her 
connection with your family. To tell them the 
truth would be of no use at all, for no one on 
earth would believe what we know to be true, 
nor could I blame them, for I, myself, would 
not have believed it if I had not been a witness.** 


MISS LUDING TON'S SISTER. 191 

Miss Ludington was silent a while. Then 
she said : ” It does not matter ; we see few, I 

may say no strangers, or even acquaintances ; 
we live alone. It is enough that we know her.’’ 

” Yes,” replied the doctor. " It is, indeed, 
quite another thing to what it would be if 
you had a large circle of acquaintances. So 
long as you live, it is not important, and I 
presume that your health is good.” 

”What is it that is not important?” de- 
manded Miss Ludington. 

"Why, that she should have a name,” re- 
plied the doctor, lifting his eyebrows with an 
expression of slight surprise. " Unfortunately, 
the courts do not recognize such a relation as 
exists between you and this young lady. You 
are the only Miss Ludington in the eye of the 
law, and she is non-existent, or, at least, an 
anonymous person. She has not so much as a 
name to sign on a hotel register. But so long 
as you live to look after her she is not likely 
to suffer.” 


192 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


” But I may die ! exclaimed Miss Luding- 
ton, 

"In that case it would be rather awkward 
for her/’ said the doctor. " She would die with 
you, in the eye of the law ; ” and here he 
branched off into rather a fantastical discourse 
on the oddities and quiddities of the law and 
lawyers, against whom he seemed to have 
a great grudge. 

"But, Dr. Hull, what can I do about it?” 
said Miss Ludington, as he quieted down. 

"Excuse me. About what?” 

" How can I give her a name in the eye of 
the law?” 

" Oh — ah — exactly ! Well, that’s easy 
enough; there are two ways. You can adopt 
her, or some young fellow can marry her, and if 
I were a young man, — if you’ll excuse an old 
gentleman for the remark, — it would not be 
my fault if she were not provided with a legal 
title very soon.” 

Declining Miss Ludington’s proposal to send 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


193 


him to the ferry in her carriage, the doctor, 
soon after, took his leave. 

He paused as he passed the croquet-ground 
and stood watching the players. It came 
Ida’s turn, and he waited to see her play. It 
was a very easy shot which she had to make ; 
she missed it badly. He bade thf^m good- 
evening, and. went on. 


194 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


CHAPTER XIL 

TT was but a few days after Dr, Hull’s visit 
that Miss Ludington had a sudden illness, 
lasting several days, which, during its crisis, 
caused much alarm. 

Ida turned all the servants out of the sick- 
room and constituted herself nurse, watcher, 
and chambermaid. - If she lay down at all 
it was only after leaving a substitute charged 
to call her upon the slightest occasion. Light 
and quick of step, strong and gentle of hand, 
patient, tireless, and tender, she showed her- 
self an angel of the sick-room. 

There was, indeed, something almost eager 
in the manner in which she seized upon this 
opportunity of devoting herself to Miss Lud- 
ington, and the zeal with which she made 
the most of every possibility of rendering 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


195 


her a service. She -seemed, in fact, almost 
sorry when the patient had no further need 
of her especial attendance. 

To Miss Ludington the revelation that she 
was so dear to Ida was profoundly affecting. 
It was natural that she should adore Ida, but 
that Ida should be correspondingly devoted 
to her touched her in proportion to its un- 
expectedness. "I should be glad to be sick 
always, with you to nurse me, my sister,” she 
said. Whenever she addressed Ida by this 
title of sister her voice lingered upon the 
syllables as if she were striving to realize 
all the mysterious closeness and tenderness of 
the relation between them which its use im- 
plied. 

The period of convalescence, during which 
Miss Ludington sat in her room, lasted sev- 
eral days, and one evening she sent for Paul. 
She was alone when he came in, and after 
he had inquired after her condition, she 
motioned him to a chair. 


196 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


'' Sit down, Paul,’' she said ; ” I want to have 
a little talk with you.” 

He sat down and she went on : "I find 
that I have been greatly enfeebled by this 
attack, and though the doctor tells me I may 
regain reasonable health, he warns me that 
I shall not live forever, and that when I die 
I may die without much warning.” 

Expressions of mingled grief, surprise, and 
incredulity from Paul interrupted her at this 
point, but she presently went on : — 

”It is really nothing to distress yourself over, 
my dear child. He does not say that I may not 
live on indefinitely, but only that when Death 
comes he is likely to enter without knock- 
ing, and Pm sure any sensible person would 
much rather have it so. It was of Ida that 
I wanted to speak to you. Since I have been 
sick, and especially since what the doctor 
told me, I have been thinking what would 
become of her if I should die. Did you ever 
consider, Paul, that she has not even a name? 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


197 


The world does not recognize the way by 
which she came back into it, and in the eye 
of the law she has no right to the name of 
Ida Ludington, or to any other.” 

” I suppose not,” said Paul. 

” It does not matter while I live,” pursued 
Miss Ludington; "but what if I should 
die?” 

"Let us not talk of that,” replied Paul, 
" or think of it. Yet even in that event I 
» should be here to protect her.” 

Miss Ludington regarded the young man for 
some moments without speaking, and then, as 
a slight color tinged her cheek, she said, 
"Paul, do you love her?” 

Do you need to ask me that?” he an- 
swered. 

"No, I do not,” she replied; and then as 
she cast down her eyes, and the color in her 
cheek grew deeper, she went on: "You know, 
Paul, that, as society is constituted, there 
is but one way in which a young man can 


198 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


protect a young girl who is not his relative, 
and that is by marrying her. Have you 
thought of that?’' 

Paul’s face flushed a deep crimson, and his 
forehead reddened to the roots of the hair ; after 
which the color receded, and he became quite 
pale; and then he flushed again, deeper than 
before, till his eyes became congested, and he 
saw Miss Ludington sitting there before him, 
with downcast eyes and a spot of color in either 
cheek, as through a fiery mist. 

Yes, he had thought of it. 

The idea that, being of mystery though she 
was, Ida was still a woman, and that he might 
one day possess her as other men possess their 
wives, had come to him, but it had caused such 
an ungovernable ferment in his blood, and sa- 
vored withal of such temerity, that he had been 
fairly afraid to indulge it. In the horizon of 
his mind it had hovered as a dream of unimag- 
inable felicity which might some day in the far 
future come to pass ; but that was all. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


199 


Finally he said, in a husky voice, "I love 
her.’’ 

” I know you do,” replied Miss Ludington. 
” No one but myself knows how you have loved 
her. You are the only man in the world 
worthy of her, but you are worthy even of 
her.” 

” But she would not marry me,” said Paul. 
” She is very good to me, but she has never 
thought of such a thing. It is I that love her, 
and she is very good to let me ; but she does 
not love me. How should she?” 

" I think she does,” said Miss Ludington, 
with a .tone of quiet assurance. ” I have never 
said anything to her about it; but I have 
observed her. A woman can generally read a 
woman in that particular, and it would be 
especially strange if I could not read her. I 
do not think that you need to be afraid of her 
answer. I shall not urge her by a word ; but if 
she is willing to be your wife, it will be by far 
the best way her future could be provided for. 


200 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


Then, however soon I might die, she would 
not miss me.’* 

Paul had heard distinctly only her first 
words, in which she had stated her belief that 
Ida loved him and would probably be his wife. 
This intimation had set up such a turmoil in his 
brain that he had not been able to follow what 
she had subsequently said. There was a roar- 
ing in his ears. Her voice seemed to come 
from very far away, nor did he remember how 
long afterwards it was that he left her. 

As he went downstairs the door of the 
sitting-room stood open, and he looked in. 
Ida sat there reading. 

The weather was very warm, and her dress 
was some gauzy stuff of a pale-green tint which 
set off her yellow hair and bare arms and 
throat with sumptuous effect. She was a rav- 
ishing symphony in white, pale green, and 
gold. 

She had not heard his approach, and was un- 
conscious of his gaze. As he thought of her as 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


201 


the woman who might be his wife, he grew so 
faint with love, so intimidated with a sense of 
his presumption in hoping to possess this glo- 
rious creature, that, not daring to enter, he fled 
out into the darkness to compose himself. 

No experience of miscellaneous flirtations, or 
more or less innocent dalliance, had ever weak- 
ened the witchery of woman’s charms for him, 
or dulled the keenness of his sensibility to the 
heaven she can bestow. For an hour he wan- 
dered about the dark and silent village street, 
waiting for the tumult of his emotions to sub- 
side sufficiently to leave him in some degree 
master of himself. When at last he returned to 
the house, his nerves strung with the resolution 
to put his fortune to the test, Ida was still in 
the sitting-room where he had left her. 

Miss Ludington’s conversation with Paul had 
left her in a mood scarcely less agitated than 
his. The sensation with which she had 
watched his devotion to Ida during the past 
weeks had been a sort of double-consciousness, 


202 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


as if it were herself whom Paul was wooing, 
although at the same time she was a spectator. 
The thoughts and emotions which she ascribed 
to Ida agitated her almost as if they had been 
experienced in her proper person. 

It was a fancy of hers that between herself 
and Ida there existed a species of clairvoyance, 
which enabled her to know what was passing 
in the latter's mind, — a completeness of rapport 
never realized between any other two minds, 
but nothing more than might be expected to 
attend such a relationship as theirs, being a 
foretaste of the tie that joins the several souls 
of an individual in heaven. She had never 
had a serious love affair in her life, but now, 
in her old age, she was passing through a 
genuine experience of the tender passion 
through her sympathetic identification with 
Ida. 

As she sat in her chamber after Paul had 
gone, fancying herself in Ida's place, imagining 
what she would hear him say, what would 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


203 


be her feelings, and what she would answer, 
her cheeks flushed, her breath came quickly, 
and there was a dew like that of dreaming 
girlhood in her faded eyes. 

She was still flushing and trembling when 
there came a soft knock on her door, and Paul 
and Ida stood before her. 

Ida was blushing deeply, with downcast face, 
and the long lashes hid her eyes. She stood 
slightly bending forward, her long beautifully 
moulded, arms hanging straight down before 
her. She looked like a beautiful captive, and 
Paul, as he clasped her waist with his arm, and 
held one of her hands in his, looked the proud- 
est of conquerors. 

"I did not know but I might be dreaming 
it,’’ he said, " and so I brought her for you to 
see. She says she will be my wife.” 


204 ' 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


CHAPTER XIII. 

T])AUUS courtship of Ida really began the 
night when he took her in his arms 
as his promised wife, for although she had 
called him her lover before, his devotion, while 
impassioned enough, had been too distant and 
wholly reverential to be called a wooing. But 
the night of their betrothal his love had caught 
from her lips a fire that was of earth, and it 
was no longer as a semi-spiritual being that 
he worshipped her, but as a woman whom 
it was no sacrilege to kiss a thousand times a 
day, not upon her hand, her sleeve, or the 
hem of her dress, but full upon the soft warm 
mouth. 

This transformation of the devotee into the 
lover on his part was attended by a correspond- 
ing change in Ida's manner toward him. A 
model relieved from a strained pose could not 


mss LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


205 


show more evident relief than she did in step- 
ping down from the pedestal of a tutelary 
saint, where he had placed her, to be loved 
and caressed like an ordinary woman, for if 
the love had at first been all on his side, it 
certainly was not now. 

"Tm so glad,” she said one day, "that you 
have done with worshipping me. Think of 
your humbling yourself before me, you who 
are a hundred thousand times better, and wiser, 
and greater than I. O Paul ! it is I who ought 
to worship you, and who am not good enough 
to kiss you,” and before he could prevent her 
she had caught his hand, and, bowing her face 
over it, had kissed it. As he drew it away 
he felt that there were tears upon it. It was 
evening, and he could not see her face dis- 
tinctly. 

"Darling,” he exclaimed, "what is the 
trouble ? ” 

" Oh, nothing at all ! ” she replied. " It is 
because I am in love, I suppose.” 


206 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


Whether it was because she was in love or 
not it is certain that she took to crying very 
often during these days. Her manner with her 
lover, too, was often strangely moody. Some- 
times she would display a gayety that was 
almost feverish, and shortly after, perhaps, he 
would surprise her in tears. But she always 
declared that she was not unhappy ; and, unable 
to conceive of any reason why she should be, 
Paul was fain to conclude that she was merely ' 
nervous. 

The absorption of the lovers in each other’s 
society naturally left Miss Ludington more 
often alone than before ; but Ida was very far 
from neglecting her for her lover. Her care 
for her since her sickness was such as a 
daughter might give to a beloved and invalid 
mother. It was an attention such as the lonely 
old lady had never enjoyed in her life, or 
looked for, and would have been most grateful 
to have had from any one, but how much 
more from Ida! 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


207 


The village street was a rarely romantic 
promenade on moonlight evenings, and the 
twanging of Paul’s guitar was often heard 
till after midnight from the meeting-house 
steps, which were a favorite resort with the 
lovers. Those steps, in the Hilton of Miss 
Ludington’s girlhood, had been a very popular 
locality with sentimental couples, and she well 
remembered certain short-lived romances of 
Ida’s first life on earth, with which they had 
been associated. One night, when the young 
people had lingered there later than usual. Miss 
Ludington put on her shawl and stepped across 
the green to warn them that it was time for 
even lovers to be abed. ^ 

As she approached, Paul was seated on the 
lower step, touching his guitar, and facing Ida, 
who sat on the step above leaning back against 
a pillar. A blotch of moonlight fell upon her 
dreamy, upturned face. One hand lay in her 
lap, and the fingers of the other were idly play- 
ing with a tress of hair that had fallen over her 


208 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


bosom. How well Miss Ludington remembered 
that attitude, and even the habit of playing 
with her hair which Ida had in the days so 
long gone by. 

She stood in -the shadow watching her till 
Paul ceased playing. Then she advanced and 
spoke to them. 

'' I have been standing here looking at you, 
my sister,’' she said. ”I have been trying to 
imagine how strangely it must come over you 
that forty years ago you sat here as you sit 
here now, just as young and beautiful then as 
now, and Paul not then born, even his 
parents children at that time.” 

Ida bent down her head and replied, in \ 
scarcely audible tones, ” I do not like to 5 
think of those days.” J 

" And I don’t like to think of them,” echoed J 
Paul, with a curious sensation of jealousy, not i 
the first of the kind that he had experienced « 
in imagining the former life of his darling. .1 
" I do not like to think who may have sat at 9 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


209 


her feet then. I, too, would like to forget those 
days/’ 

Ida bent her head still lower and said noth- 
ing. It was Miss Ludington who spoke. 

" You have no ground to feel so,” she said. ” I 
can bear her witness, — and what better witness 
could you have? — that till now she never 
knew what it is to love. It is true she sat here 
then as now, and there were others at her feet, 
drawn by the same beauty that has drawn you, 
but their voices never touched her heart. She 
had to come back again to earth to learn what 
love is.” 

Paul bent contritely, and kissed Ida’s feet as 
she sat above him, murmuring, ” Forgive me ! ” 
Her hand sought his and pressed it with con- 
vulsive strength. 

They walked home in silence, gentle Miss 
Ludington inwardly reproaching herself for the 
embarrassment her words had seemed to cause 
Ida. She examined her memory afresh. It 
was very long ago ; she was growing old, and it 


210 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


was natural to suppose that her memory might 
be losing its distinctness. Perhaps some of the 
sweethearts of that far away time had been a 
little nearer, a little dearer, to Ida than to her 
own fading memory they seemed to have 
been. Perhaps she had done a stupid thing in 
referring to those days. 

Meanwhile, despite of circumstances that 
would seem peculiarly favorable to a young 
girl’s happiness, Ida’s tendency to melancholy 
was increasing upon her at a rate which began 
to cause Miss Ludington as well as Paul serious 
anxiety. She had indeed been pensive from 
the first, but the expression of her face, when in 
repose, had of late become one of profound 
dejection. The shadow which they had never 
been able to banish from her eyes had deepened 
into a look of habitual sadness. Coming 
upon her unexpectedly, both Miss Ludington 
and Paul had several times found her in 
tears, which she would not or could not 
explain. Not infrequently, when she was 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


2II 


alone with her lover, and they had been silent 
awhile, he had looked up to find her eyes fixed 
upon him and brimming with tears, and at 
other times, when he was in the very act of 
caressing her, she would burst out crying, and 
sob in his arms. 

But her unaccountable reluctance to consent 
to any definite arrangement for her marriage 
with the man she tenderly loved and had 
promised to wed, was the most marTced 
symptom of something hysterical in her con- 
dition. 

Some three weeks had elapsed since she 
had given her word to be Paul’s wife, but 
though he had repeatedly begged her to name 
a day for their wedding, he had entirely failed 
to obtain any satisfactory reply. When he 
grew importunate, the only effect was to set her 
to crying, as if her heart would break. He 
was completely perplexed. If she did not love 
him, her conduct would be readily explainable ; 
but that she was in love with him, and very 


212 


MISS LUDINCTON^S SISTER, 


much in love with him, he had increasing evi- 
dence every day. 

She gave nothing that could be called a 
reason for refusing to say when she would 
marry him, though she talked feebly of its be- 
ing so soon, and of not being ready ; but when 
he reminded her of the special considerations 
that made delay inexpedient, of her own 
peculiarly unprotected condition, and of Miss 
Ludington’s uncertain health, and desire to see 
them married as soon as possible, she at- 
tempted no reply, but took refuge in tears, 
leaving him no choice but to relinquish the 
question and devote himself to soothing her. 

When, finally. Miss Ludington asked Paul 
what were their plans, and he told her of 
Ida's strange behavior, they took troubled 
counsel together concerning her. 

It was evident that she was in a state of high 
nervous tension, and her conduct must be at- 
tributed to that. Nor was it strange that the 
experiences through which she had passed 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


213 


in the last month or two, supplemented by the 
agitations of so extraordinary a love affair, 
should have left her in a condition of abnormal 
excitability. 

" She must not be hurried,*' said Miss Luding- 
ton. ” She has promised to be your wife, and 
you know that she loves you; that ought 
to be enough to give you patience to wait. 
Why, Paul, you loved her all your life up to 
the last month without even seeing her, and did 
not think the time long." 

"You forget," he replied, "that it is seeing 
her which makes it so hard to wait." 

A day or two later, when she chanced to be 
sitting alone with her in the afternoon, Miss 
Ludington said: "When are you and Paul to 
be married? " 

"It is not decided yet," Ida replied, falter- 

"Has not Paul spoken to you about it?” 

" Oh, yes ! " 

" I had hoped that you would have been 


214 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


married before this/’ said Miss Ludington, 
after a pause. "You know why I am so 
anxious that there should be no delay in as- 
suring your position. The time is short I 
know, but the reasons against postponement 
are strong, and if you love him I cannot see 
why you should hesitate. Perhaps you are 
not quite sure that you do love him. A girl 
ought to be sure of that.” 

" Oh, I am quite sure of that ! I love him 
with all my heart,” exclaimed Ida, and began to 
cry. 

Miss Ludington sat down beside her, and, 
drawing the girl’s head to her shoulder, tried 
to sooth her ; but her gentleness only made Ida 
sob more vehemently. 

Presently the elder lady said, "You are ner- 
vous, my little sister ; don’t cry, now. We won’t 
talk about it any more. I did not intend to 
say a word to urge you against your wishes, 
but only to find out what they were. You 
shall wait as long as you please before marry- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


215 


ing him, and he shall not tease you. Mean- 
while I will see to it that, if I should die, you 
will be left secure and well provided for, even 
if you never marry any one.” 

"What do you mean?” asked Ida, raising her 
head and manifesting a sudden interest. 

" I will adopt you as my daughter,” said 
Miss Ludington, cheerily. " Won’t it be odd, 
pretending that you are my daughter, and that 
instead of coming into the world before me, 
you came in after me ? But it is the only way 
by which I can give you a legal title to the 
name of Ida Ludington, although it is yours 
already by a claim prior to mine. I would 
rather see you Paul’s wife, and under his pro- 
tection, but this arrangement will secure your 
safety. You see, until you have a legal name 
I cannot make you my heir, or even leave you 
a dollar.” 

" Do you mean that you want to make me 
your heir?” exclaimed Ida. 

"Of course,” said Miss Ludington. "What 


2i6 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


else could I think of doing? Even if you had 
married Paul, do you suppose I would have 
wished to have you dependent on him? I 
should then have left you a fortune under the 
name of Mrs. De Riemer. As it is, I shall 
leave it to my adopted daughter, Ida Luding- 
ton. That is the only difference.’’ 

” But, Paul?” 

” Don’t fret about Paul,” replied Miss Luding- 
ton. ” I shall not neglect him. I have a 
great deal of money, and am able to provide 
abundantly for you both.” 

” Oh, do not do this thing ! I beg you will 
not,” cried Ida, seizing Miss Ludington’s hands, 
and looking into her face with an almost 
frenzied expression of appeal. ” I do not 
want your money. Don’t give it to me. I can’t 
bear to have you. You have given me so 
much, and you are so good to me ! — and that I 
should rob Paul, too ! Oh, no ! you must not 
do it; I will never let you.” 

"But, my darling,” said Miss Ludington, 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


217 


soothingly, " think what you are to me, and 
what I am to you. Of course you cannot be 
conscious of our relation, in the absolute way I 
am, through the memory I have of you. I 
can only prove what I am to you by argument 
and evidence, but surely I have fully proved it, 
and you must not let yourself doubt it; that 
would be most cruel. To whom should I leave 
my money if not to you ? Are we not nearer 
kin than two persons ever were on earth 
before? What have been the clain^s of all 
other heirs since property was inherited com- 
pared with yours ? Have I not inherited from 
you all I am, — my very personality, and 
should not you be my heir? 

” And remember,’' she went on, ” it is not 
only as my heir that you have a claim on me ; 
your claim would be almost as great if you 
were neither near nor dear to me. It was 
through my action that you were called back, 
without any will of your own, to resume the 
life which you had once finished on earth. I 


2I8 


MISS LUDINGTON’S SISTER, 


did not intend or anticipate that result, to be 
sure, but I am not the less responsible for it, 
and being thus responsible, though you had 
been a stranger to me instead of my other self, 
I should be under the most solemn obligation 
to guard and protect the life I had imposed 
on you.” 

While Miss Ludington was speaking Ida's 
tears had ceased to flow, and she had become 
quite calm. She seemed to have been im- 
pressed by what Miss Ludington had said. 
At least she offered no further opposition to 
the plan proposed. 

” I am very anxious to lose no time,” said 
Miss Ludington, presently, ”and I think we 
had better drive into Brooklyn the first thing 
to-morrow morning, and see my lawyer about 
the necessary legal proceedings.” 

"Just as you please,” said Ida, and presently, 
pleading a nervous headache, she went to her 
room and remained there the rest of the 
afternoon. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


219 


Meanwhile Paul had seen Miss Ludington, 
and she had told him of her talk with Ida, 
and its result. The young man was beside 
himself with chagrin, humiliation, and baffled 
love. The fact that Ida had consented to the 
plan of adoption showed beyond doubt that 
she had given up all idea of being his wife, at 
least for the present, and possibly of ever 
marrying him at all. 

Why had she dealt with him so strangely? 
Why had she used him with such cruel 
caprice? Was ever a man treated so per- 
versely by a woman who loved him? Miss 
Ludington could only shake her head as he 
poured out his complaints to her. Ida's con- 
tradictory behavior was as much a puzzle to 
her as to him, and she deplored it scarcely 
less. But she insisted that he should not 
trouble the girl by demanding explanations of 
her, as that, by vexing her, would only make 
matters worse. 

If, indeed, Paul had any disposition to 


220 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER 


take the attitude of an aggrieved person, it 
vanished when he met Ida at the tea-table. 
The sight of her swollen eyes and red lids, 
and the piteous looks of deprecating ten- 
derness which from time to time she bent on 
him, left room for nothing in his heart but a 
great love and compassion. Whatever might 
be the secret of this strange caprice it was 
evidently no mere piece of wantonness. She 
was suffering from it as much as he. 

He tried to get a chance to talk with her ; 
but Miss Ludington, feeling slightly ill, went 
to her room directly after tea, and Ida ac- 
companied her to see that she was properly 
cared for, and got comfortably to bed. After 
waiting a long while for her to come down- 
stairs, Paul concluded that she did not intend 
to appear again, and went off for a walk, in 
the hope thereby of regaining something of 
his equanimity. 

It was about ten o'clock when he returned 
home. As he came in sight of the house he 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


221 


saw by the light reflected from the sitting- 
room windows that there was some one upon 
the piazza. As he came nearer he perceived 
that it was Ida. She was sitting sidewise 
upon a long, cane-bottomed settee, and her 
arms were thrown upon the back of it to form 
a sort of pillow on which her head rested. 
His tread upon the turf was inaudible, and 
she neither saw nor heard him as he ap- 
proached, nor when, softly mounting the steps, 
he stood over her. 

She was indeed sobbing with such violence 
that she could not have been easily sensible 
of anything external. Paul had never heard 
such piteous weeping. He had never seen 
much of women’s crying, and he did not know 
what abandonment of grief their tender frames 
can sustain, — grief that seemingly would kill a 
man if he could feel it. Long, gurgling sobs 
followed one another as the waves of the sea 
sweep over the head of a strangling swimmer. 
Every now and then they were interrupted 


222 


MISS LUDINGTON*S SISTER. 


by sharp cries of exquisite anguish, such as 
might be wrung out by the sudden twist of a 
rack, and then would come a low, shrill croon- 
ing sound, almost musical, beyond which it 
seemed grief could not go. 

The violence of the paroxysm would pass, 
and she would grow calmer, drawing long, shud- 
dering breaths as she struggled back to self- 
control. Then a quick panting would begin 
and grow faster and faster, till another burst 
of sobs shook her like a leaf in the storm. 

In very awe of such great grief Paul stood 
awhile silently over her, the tears filling his own 
eyes and running down his cheeks unheeded. 
She had wept something like this, though 
nothing like so long or so bitterly, on former 
occasions, when he had urged her with special 
vehemence to fix a day when she would fulfil 
her promise to be his wife. 

Now, as he pondered the piteous spectacle 
before him, the thought came over him that his 
first reverential instinct concerning her, that de- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


223 


spite her resumption of a mortal form she was 
something more than mortal, was true, and that 
he had done wrong in so far forgetting it as to 
urge her to be his wife as if she were merely a 
woman like others. She herself did not know 
it, but surely this exceeding cruel crying was 
nothing else but the conflict between the love of 
the woman which went out to her earthly lover, 
and would fain make him happy, and the 
nature of the inhabitant of heaven, where there 
is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. 
This was the key to her inexplicable sorrow 
during the past weeks. This explained why, 
though she loved him so tenderly, the thought 
of becoming his wife was so intolerable to 
her. 

So be it. Her nature could not sink to his, 
but his should rise to hers. This brief dream 
of earthly passion must pass. Better a thou- 
sand times that he should be disappointed in all 
that is dear to the heart of a man, than that he 
should grieve her thus. In that moment it did 


224 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


not seem hard to him to sacrifice the hopes of 
the man to the devotion of the lover. By one, 
great effort he rose again to the level of the as- 
cetic passion that had glorified his life up to 
these last delirious weeks. She had brought 
heaven to earth for him, but it should still be 
heaven, since her happiness demanded it. 

And having reasoned thus, at last, for there 
seemed no end of her weeping, or any diminu- 
tion of its bitterness, he touched her. She 
started, and turned her streaming eyes to him, 
then, seeing who it was, threw her arms around 
his neck, and, as he sat beside her, laid her 
head on his shoulder, clinging to him convul- 
sively. 

"You don’t believe I love you, Paul; and 
I can't blame you for it, I can't blame you," she 
sobbed ; " but I do, oh, I do ! " 

"I do believe it. I know it," he said- 
" Don’t think that I doubt it, and don't cry 
now, for after this your love shall be enough 
for me. I will not trouble you any more with 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 22$ 

importunings to be my wife. I have been 
very cruel to you.” 

” It is because I love you that I will not 
marry you,” she sobbed. "Promise me you 
will never doubt that. Don't ask me to ex- 
plain to you why it is; only believe me.” 

" I think I understand why it is already,” he 
replied, gently. " I was very dull not to know 
before. If I had known, I should not have 
caused you so much grief.'’ 

She raised her head from his shoulder. 

"What is it that you know?” she asked, 
quickly. 

He thereupon proceeded to tell her, in ten- 
derest words of reverence, what, in his opinion, 
was the mystical cause, unsuspected, perhaps, 
even by herself, of her unconquerable repug- 
nance to the idea of being his wife, truly as he 
knew she loved him. He blamed himself that 
he had not recognized the sacred instinct which 
had held her back, but in his selfish blindness 
had gone on urging her to do violence to her 


226 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


nature. Now that his eyes were opened he 
would not grieve her any more. Her love 
alone should satisfy and bless him. Earthly 
passion should no more vex her serenity. 

When he first began to speak she had re- 
garded him with evident astonishment. As 
the meaning of his words became clear to 
her, she had turned her face away from him 
and covered it with both her hands, as a person 
does under an overpowering sense of shame. 
She did not remove them until he had finished, 
when she rose abruptly. 

Light enough came from the windows behind 
them for him to see that her cheeks and fore- 
head were crimson. 

” I think I may as well go now,” she said. 
" Good-by,’’ and in another moment he found 
himself alone, not a little astonished at the 
suddenness of her departure. 


SS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


227 


CHAPTER XIV. 

I DA passed with a quick step through the 
sitting-room and upstairs to her bedroom, 
where she locked the door and threw her- 
self upon the bed in a paroxysm of tearless 
sobbing. 

'' I believe I have no more tears left,” she 
whispered, as at last she raised herself and 
arranged her dishevelled hair. 

She sat awhile in woful revery upon the edge 
of the bed, and then crossed the room to a 
beautiful writing-desk which Miss Ludington 
had given her. She opened it, and, taking out 
several sheets of paper, prepared to write. 
” If I had not run upstairs that moment,” she 
murmured, " I must have told him the whole 
horrible story. But it is better this way. 
I believe it would have killed me to see the 
look on his face. O my darling, my darling! 


228 


Af/SS LUDING TON'S SISTER. 


what will you think of me when you know?** 
and then she sat down to write. 

She stopped so many times to cry over it 
that it was midnight when the writing was 
finished. It was a letter, and the superscrip- 
tion read as follows : — 

To my lover, Paul, who will never love me any more 
after he reads this, but whom I shall love forever : — 

This letter will explain to you why my room is empty 
this morning. I could stand it no longer : to be loved, 
and almost worshipped, by those whom I was basely 
deceiving. And so I have fled. You will never see me 
or hear from me again, and you will never want to after 
you have read this letter. All the jewelry and dresses, 
and everything that Miss Ludington has given me, I have 
left behind, except the clothes I had to have to go away 
in, and these I will return as soon as I get where I am 
going. O my poor Paul ! I am no more Ida Ludington 
than you are. How could you ever believe such a thing? 
But let me tell my shameful story in order. Perhaps it 
was not so strange that you were deceived. I think any 
one might have been who held the belief you did at the 
outset. 

I am Ida Slater, Mrs. Slater’s daughter, whom she 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


229 


named after Miss Ludington, because she thought her 
name so pretty when they went to school together as 
children in Hilton. I was born in Hilton twenty-three 
years ago, several years after Miss Ludington left the 
village. My father is Mr. Slater, of course, but he is 
the person you know as Dr. Hull, which is an assumed 
name. Mrs. Legrand, who is no more dead than you 
are, is a sister of my father. Her husband is dead, and 
father acts as her manager, and mother helps about the 
seances, and does what she can in any way to bring in 
a little money. We have always been very poor, and 
it has been very, very hard for us to get a living. Father 
is a man of education, and had tried many things before 
we came to this, but nothing succeeded. We grew 
poorer and poorer, and when this business came in our 
way he had to take up with it, or send us to the alms- 
house. It is not an honest business, at least as we con- 
ducted it ; but, O Paul ! none of you that are rich under- 
stand that to a very poor man the duty of supporting his 
family seems sometimes as if it were the only duty in the 
world. 

Well, when mother came to visit Miss Ludington, and 
saw that picture which is so much like me, and so little, 
mother says, like what Miss Ludington ever was, and 
when she found out about your belief in the immortality 
of past selves, the idea first came to her of deceiving you. 


230 


MISS LUDTNGTON^S SISTER, 


That story of mother’s going to Cincinnati was a lie, 
to prevent your suspecting that she had anything to do 
with the business. Mrs. Rhinehart is an imaginary 
person. At first, the idea was only to get you interested 
in the seances, for the profit of the fees ; but when they 
saw how entirely deceived you were by my resemblance 
to the picture, the scheme of getting me into this house 
occurred to them. 

Or rather it did not occur to them at all. It was you, 
Paul, yourself, who suggested it, when you said that night 
after the first seance, that if a medium died in a trance, 
you believed the materialized spirit could not demateri- 
alize but would return to earth. But for that the idea 
would never have occurred to them. 

It seemed a daring plot, but many things favored it. 
I had lived in Hilton up to within a few years, and knew 
every stick and stone of the old as well as the new part 
of the village. I had wandered all over the old Ludington 
homestead time and again. Mother knew as much about 
Miss Ludington’s early life as she did herself, and could 
post me on the subject, and there was my wonderful 
resemblance to the picture, which, of itself, would be 
almost enough to carry me through. 

It was for my sake entirely that they proposed this 
scheme. My father and mother maybe looked down upon 
by the world as a very poor kind of people, but they have 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


231 


always been very good to me. I will not have you 
blame them except as you blame me with them. They 
thought that in this way I could be rescued from the hard 
and questionable life which they were living, and in which 
they did not wish me to grow up. If the plan succeeded, 
and you were deceived and took me here, thinking me 
the true Ida, they believed that I would be secured a life 
of happiness and luxury. They had seen, too, how you 
were in love with the true Ida, and made no question that 
you would love me and marry me. 

It was that more than all, Paul, that decided me to do 
it. I had fallen in love with you that night of the first 
seance when I stood before you and you looked at me with 
such boundless, adoring love. I think it would have 
turned almost any girl’s head to be looked at in that way. 
And then, Paul, you are very handsome. 

I always had a taste for acting. They used to say I 
would have done well on the stage, and the idea of play- 
ing a r 61 e so fine and so bold as this took my fancy from 
the start. It was that, Paul, that, and the notion of your 
making love to me, more than any thought of the wealth 
and luxury I might get a share in, which made me consent 
to the plan. 

That sickness of Mrs. Legrand’s between the seances — 
I am telling you all, Paul — was only a sham, so that we 
might see how much in earnest you were, and to get time 


232 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


for me to learn by heart all mother could teach me about 
the Hilton of forty years ago and Miss Ludington’s 
girlhood. There were so many lists of names to be kept 
in mind, and school-room incidents, picnics, and flirta- 
tions ; but it was as interesting as a romance, and being a 
Hilton girl, it did not take me long to make myself as 
much at home with the last generation as with my own. 
Sometimes mother would say to me, “ Ida, if I did not 
know that you are a good girl, and would be good 
to Miss Ludington, I would not betray my old friend 
this way. I would not do it for any one. but you, and 
if I did not believe that in deceiving her you would 
make her very happy — far happier than now.” 

I think, in spite of all, she was very fond of Miss 
Ludington, for she made me promise, again and again, 
that I would be very good to her, as if I could have helped 
being good to such a gentle, tender-hearted person as she. 

You s.ee, in our business, we had shown to so many sad 
people what they believed to be the forms and faces of 
their dead friends, and had sent them away comforted, 
that we had come to feel our frauds condoned by the 
happiness they caused, and that we were, after all, doing 
good. 

As for you, Paul, mother had no scruples. She said that 
I was a good girl, and any man was lucky to get me. I 
was not sure of that, but I knew that any girl would be 


MISS LUDING TON'S SISTER, 


233 


fortunate whom you loved. She had a dress cut for me in 
the exact pattern of that in the picture, — a very old-fash- 
ioned pattern, but very becoming to me, and all was 
ready. You know the rest. 

I forgot to say that the reason the dress all fell to pieces 
the day after I came here was that it had been treated 
with a chemical preparation, which had completely rotted 
the texture of the cloth. Indeed, I had trouble to keep 
it together that first night. Father saw to this part. He 
understands chemistry, and, indeed, everything else ex- 
cept how to make a living. 

There was no trap-door in the floor in Tenth street, but 
the whole ceiling of the cabinet was a trap-door, the edges 
hidden by the breadth of the boards forming the partition 
which enclosed it. It rose on oiled hinges, with a pulley 
and a counter weight, at a touch of a finger, and the 
person who was to appear, unless it was a part that the 
medium herself could take, descended in an instant by 
letting down a short light ladder, wrapped in cloth, so as 
to make no sound. The draught of air just before the 
appearance, which Miss Ludington has spoken of in her 
talks with me, was something that we never thought of, 
and was caused, I suppose, by the drawing of the air up 
through the raised ceiling. 

It was all so easy, so easy ; we need not have taken half 
the precautions we did, you were so absolutely convinced 


234 


MISS LUDINGTON*S SISTER. 


from the first moment that I was the Ida of the picture. 
From the time I came home with you that night till now 
there has been no question of my proving who I was, but 
only of Miss Ludington’s proving, and of your proving, to 
me, that you were the persons you claimed to be. It was 
not whether I was related to her, but only that she was 
related to me, which Miss Ludington thought in any need 
-of demonstration. 

And as for you, Paul, it is not your fault that I was not 
your wife weeks ago. 

And so I should have been, and Miss Ludington’s heir, 
besides, but for two particulars in which our plot was 
fatally defective. It provided for all other contingencies, 
but made no allowance for the possibilities that I might 
prove capable of gratitude toward Miss Ludington, 
and that I might fall in love with you. Both these things 
have happened to me, and there is no choice left me but to 
fly in the night. Of course I had expected you to fall in 
love with me, and I had fancied you so much, after seeing 
you the first time, as to feel that it would be very fine to 
have you for a lover, and even for a husband. But that 
was not really love at all. I think if you could understand 
even a little what dismay came over me when I first 
realized that my heart was yours, you would almost pity 
me. After that, to deceive you was torture to me, and 
yet, to tell you the truth would have been to make you 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


235 


loath me like a snake. O Paul ! think of what I have 
suffered these past weeks, and pity me a little ! 

You will understand now why it was that I could not 
bear to have the circumstances of the fraud we had prac- 
tised on you alluded to in my presence, and why, after 
the first few days, I never spoke of them myself. 

When father, whom you know as Dr. Hull, came that 
day to see how the plot was succeeding, I thought I 
should die with shame. He tried to catch my eye, and to 
get a chance to speak with me, but I avoided him. He 
must have gone away very much puzzled by my conduct, 
for it had been arranged between us that he should come. 
By that time, you see, I had become heart-sick of the 
part I was playing. 

^ But, Paul, you must not think that it was mere sham, 
father’s drawing you out so much to talk at the table that 
night, and pretending to be so much taken up with what 
you said. He is great for being taken up with new 
ideas, and I think his interest was quite genuine. I 
knew before I left home that he half believed you to be 
right about the immortality of past selves. For my part, I 
believe it wholly, and that I have abused not only Miss 
Ludington and you, but the spirit of her whom I have 
personated. 

If Miss Ludington had not so loaded me with kindness 
I could have borne it better, but to have that sweet old 


236 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


lady fairly worshipping the ground one trod on, and cover- 
ing one with gifts, and dresses, and jewels, would have 
been too much, I think, for the conscience of the worst 
person in the world. 

I should have fled from the house before I had been 
here a week but for you, Paul. I could not bear to leave 
you. If .1 had only gone then I should have saved myself 
much ; for what would it have been to leave you then to 
what it is now ! 

It was very wrong in me to promise to marry you that 
night when you came to me ; for I knew then as well as 
now that I never could. But I loved you so, I had no 
strength. Oh, these last happy weeks ! I wonder if you 
have been so happy as I, — so happy or so miserable, I 
don’t know which to say; for all the time there was a 
deadly sickness at my heart, and every night I cried my- 
self to sleep, and woke up crying ; and yet I loved you so 
I could not but be happy in being where you were. Re- 
member always, Paul, that if I had not loved you so, I 
should have let you marry an adventuress ; for that is 
what I suppose you will call me now, — you, who could 
not find words tender enough for me. Yes, if I had loved 
you less, I would have been your wife, and I would have 
made you very happy, just as we made so many poor 
people happy at our seances, — by deceiving them. But 
I could not deceive you. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


237 


It is true that I have been meanwhile deceiving you, but 
it has only been from day to day. I knew it was not to 
last, and I lacked strength to end it sooner. Think how 
dear your kisses must have been to me, that I could en- 
dure them with the knowledge all the while that if you 
knew whom you were kissing, you would spurn me with 
your foot. 

As soon as you began to urge me to name a day for our 
marriage I knew that the end was near. You wondered 
why I cried so whenever you spoke of it. You know now. 
To-day Miss Ludington told me that she intended to 
adopt me and leave me her fortune, so that I need feel 
under no necessity to marry you if I did not wish to. 
Think of that, Paul! Can you conceive of any one so 
low, so base, as to be capable of taking advantage of such 
a heart ? As she was talking to me, I made up my mind 
that I must go to-night. 

This evening, when I was helping her to bed (I have 
been so glad to do all I could for her; it took away a 
little of my shame to see how happy I made her) she 
seemed so troubled because I could not keep my tears 
from falling. When you read her this, she will think her 
sympathy wasted. And yet she will not think hard of 
me. She could not think hard of any one, and I am sure 
I love her dearly, and always shall. 

O Paul, my darling, do not despise me utterly ! My 


238 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


love was pure ; it was as pure as any one’s could be, 
though I have been so bad. I think my heart was break- 
ing when you found me crying on the piazza to-night. It 
was not only that I must leave you, and never look on 
your face again, but that I must give over my memory to 
your scorn and loathing. When you took me in your 
arms and comforted me, my resolution all gave way, and 
I felt that I would not, could not go. I think I was on the 
point of throwing myself at your feet and confessing all, 
and begging to be taken as the lowest servant in the 
house, so that I might be near you. 

And then it was that you began to explain to me that, 
although I might not be aware of it, the reason that 1 
would not be your wife was that, having come from heaven, 
my nature was purer than that of earthly women, and 
shrank from marriage as a sacrilege. 

Think of your saying that to me ! 

When I comprehended you, and saw that you actually 
believed what you said, I realized the folly of imagining 
that you could ever pardon me for what I had done, or 
that the gulf between what I was and what you thought 
me to be could ever be bridged. So it was that you your- 
self gave me back the resolution and the strength to leave 
you which went from me when I was in your arms. I was 
overcome with such shame and self-contempt that I could 
not even kiss you as I left you forever. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


239 


I have told you my whole story, Paul, that you may 
know not alone how black my deception was, but how 
bitterly I have expiated it. I came into this house a 
frivolous girl; I leave it a broken-hearted woman. Do 
not blame me too harshly. It is myself that I have in- 
jured most. I leave you as well off as before you saw me ; 
free to return to your spirit-love. She will forgive you. 
It is my only consolation that she is but a spirit-love. If 
she were a woman I could never have given you up to her. 
Never! O Paul ! if I could only hope that you would not 
wholly despise me, that you would think sometimes a 
little pitifully of 

Ida Slater. 

She next wrote a note to Miss Ludington, 
full of contrition and tenderness, and referring 
her to Paul's letter for the whole story. It was 
after two o'clock in the morning when she 
finished the second letter, and laid it in plain 
view beside the other. She next removed her 
jewels and exchanged her rich costume for the 
simplest in her wardrobe, and having donned 
cloak and hat, extinguished the light, and softly 
unlocking the door, stepped into the hall. 


240 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 

Perfect silence reigned in the house. As 
she stood listening the clock in the sitting- 
room struck three. There was no time to lose. 
The early summer dawn would soon arrive, 
and before the first servants or neighbors were 
stirring she must be outside the grounds and 
well on her way. 

There was a late risen moon, and enough 
light penetrated the house to enable her to 
make her way without difficulty. As she 
passed Paul’s door she stopped and stood 
leaning her forehead against the casement for 
some minutes. At last she knelt and pressed 
her lips to the threshold, and, choking down a 
sob, went on down the stairs. As she passed 
through the sitting-room she paused a moment 
before the picture. ” Forgive me,” she whis- 
pered, looking up at the dimly visible face of 
Ida Ludington, and passed on. Unfastening a 
window that opened upon the piazza, she 
stepped forth and closed it behind her. 

At the first light sound of her feet upon 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 24 1 


the walk, the mastiff that guarded the house 
bounded up to her, and, seeing who it was, 
licked her hand. The big beast had fallen in 
love with her on her first arrival, and been her 
devoted attendant ever since. She sat down 
on the edge of the walk and put her arms 
around his neck, wetting his shaggy coat with 
her tears. Here was a friend who would know 
no difference between Ida Slater and Ida 
Ludington. Here was one who loved her for 
herself. 

Presently she rose, dried her eyes, and 
went on down the street, the dog trotting 
contentedly behind her. As she came to a 
point beyond which the trees cut off the view 
of the house, she stood still, gazing back at it 
for a long time. Finally, with a gesture of 
renunciation, she turned and passed swiftly 
out of sight. 


242 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


CHAPTER XV. 

TT was Miss Ludington herself who, stirring 
unusually early, discovered Ida's flight on 
going to her room. 

Paul opened his eyes a few minutes later to 
see her standing by his bedside, the picture of 
consternation. 

" She is gone ! " she exclaimed. 

"Who is gone?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. 

" Ida has gone. Her room is empty." 

Hastily dressing, he rejoined her in Ida’s 
chamber, and together they went over the 
letters she had left. 

If the revelation which they contained had 
been made when she had been in the 
house a shorter time, its effect might have 
been very different. But it had come too 
late to produce the revulsion of feeling it 
might then have caused. True, it was under a 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


243 


false name that she had first won their confi- 
dence, but it was the girl herself whom they 
had learned to love. If her name proved 
to be Ida Slater, why, it was Ida Slater whom 
they loved. It was the person, not the name. 

" Oh, why did she leave us ! cried Miss 
Ludington, with streaming eyes, as she finished 
Ida’s letter to Paul. ” Why did she not 
come to us and tell us ! We would have 
forgiven her. She was not so much to blame 
as her parents. How can we blame her when 
we think how happy she has made us ! O 
Paul ! we must find her. We must bring her 
back.” 

He pressed her hand in silence. His 
darling, his heart’s love, had gone away from 
him, out into the world, and he knew not where 
to find her, and yet it would be hard to say 
whether there was not more of exultation than 
of despair in the mingled emotions which just 
then deprived him of the power of speech. 

He had comprehended perfectly well her 


244 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


confession of the deception which she had 
practised on them, but the portion of her letter 
which had chiefly affected him had been the 
impassioned avowal of her love for him. After 
his recent trying ordeal in striving to subject an 
earthly love to spiritual conditions, culminating 
the night before in the renunciation of the hope 
of ever marrying her at all, there was an intoxi- 
cating happiness in the discovery that she was 
every whit as earthly as he, and loved him with 
a passion as ardent as his own. He v/as a 
Pygmalion, whose statue had become a woman. 
For the first time he now realized how far his 
heart had travelled from the spirit-love which 
once had been enough for it, and how impos- 
sible it was that it should ever again find satis- 
faction in the dim and nebulous emotion in 
which it had so long rested. With a sense of 
recreancy that was wholly shameless, he real- 
ized that it was no longer Ida Ludington, 
but Ida Slater, whom he loved. 

Little did the forlorn girl, in her self- 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


245 


imposed exile, imagine what a welcome would 
have met her if, moved by some intuition, she 
had retraced her steps that morning to the 
chamber which a few hours before she had 
deserted. 

Repentance often is so fine that in the moral 
balance it quite outweighs the fault repented of, 
and so it was in her case. Such repentance is 
as if the black stalk of sin had blossomed and 
put forth a fragrant flower. 

These two persons, whom she had expected 
to loath her as soon as they should know the 
truth, had 'from the first reading of her story 
been more impressed with the chivalrous 
instinct which had driven her to abandon her 
r61e of fraud when it was about to be crowned 
with dazzling success, than with her original 
offence in entering upon it. The effect of her 
story was in this respect a curious one for a 
confession to produce: it had added to the 
affection which they had previously entertained 
for her, an appreciation of the nobility of 


246 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


her character which they had not then pos- 
sessed. 

Paul’s heart yearned after its mistress in her 
self-humiliation and voluntary banishment as 
never before. This impassioned and most 
human woman, who had shown herself capa- 
ble of wrong, and, also, of most generous re- 
nunciation, had struck a deeper chord in his 
breast than had ever vibrated to the touch of 
the flawless seraph he had supposed her to be. 

Having canvassed all possible methods of 
reaching Ida in her flight, it was decided by 
Paul and his aunt to begin by advertising, and 
that same day the following notice was inserted 
in all the daily papers of Brooklyn and New 
York: — 

Ida S r. All is forgiven ; only come back. We 

cannot live without you. For pity’s sake at least write 
to us. 

Miss L AND Paul. 

This advertisement was to remain in the 
papers till forbidden. If Ida was anywhere in 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


247 


the two cities or vicinity, the chances were that 
it would fall under the notice of herself or 
some of her family. Before inserting the ad- 
vertisement Paul had visited Mrs. Legrand’s 
house in East Tenth street; but, as he had 
expected, he found that the family had moved 
away long previously, probably with a view to 
avoid detection, and to enable Mrs. Legrand to 
resume business elsewhere. 

A week passed without any response to the 
advertisement. Paul spent his days walking 
the streets of New York and Brooklyn, at ran- 
dom, for the sake of the chance, about one in 
ten billions, that he might meet Ida. Anything 
was more endurable than sitting at home wait- 
ing, and by dint of tramping all day long he 
was so dead tired when he reached home at night 
that he could sleep, which otherwise would 
have been out of the question. 

About the middle of the week a bundle 
arrived, containing the dress Ida had worn 
away, with her hat and cloak ; but without a word 


248 MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER. 


of writing, Paul devoured them with kisses. 
A study of the express markings showed that 
the package must have been sent from Brook- 
lyn, which went to show that Ida was in that 
city. Believing that she did not intend to re- 
spond to the advertisement, Paul had deter- 
mined, if he did not hear from her within a few 
days, to employ a prominent New York detec- 
tive firm to search for her. If he could but 
once see her face to face, he was sure that he 
could bring her back. 

A week from the day on which she had fled 
he was starting out as usual, early in the morn- 
ing, for another day of hopeless, weary tramping 
in the city, when the postman handed him a 
letter addressed in her handwriting. It was 
to him like a voice from the grave, and read as 
follows : — 

I have seen your advertisement for me. I cannot be- 
lieve that you have forgiven me. You could not do it. 
It is impossible. Even if I could believe it, I do not think 
I should ever have the courage to face you after what you 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


249 


know of me. I should die of shame. O Paul ! if you 
could see how my cheeks burn as I write this, and know 
that you will see it. But I cannot deny myself the happi- 
ness of writing to you. There is no reason why we should 
not write sometimes, is there? though we never see each 
other. Does Miss Ludington really forgive me, or does 
she merely consent to have me return because you still 
care for me? If you do still care for me, — OPaul! I 
cannot believe it, — do you forget what I have done ? 
Read over again the letter I left for you when I came 
away. You must have forgotten it. Read it carefully. 
Think it all over. Oh, no, you cannot love me still! 

Ida Slater. 

Paul replied with the first love-letter he had 
ever written, and one that any woman who 
loved him must have found irresistible. He 
enclosed a note from Miss Ludington, assuring 
Ida of the unhappiness which her flight had 
caused them, the undiminished tenderness 
which they cherished for her, and the cruelty 
she would be guilty of if she refused to return. 

In response to these letters there came a 
note saying simply, will come.’* 


250 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


On the evening of the day this note was re- 
ceived, as Paul and Miss Ludington were to- 
gether in the sitting-room talking as usual of 
Ida, and wondering on what day she would 
return, there was a light step at the open door, 
and she glided into the room, and, throwing 
herself on her knees before Miss Ludington, 
hid her face in her lap. 

It was an hour before she would raise her 
head, replying the while only with sobs to the 
kisses and caresses showered upon her, and the 
assurances of love and welcome poured into 
her ears. 

When at last she lifted her face her embar- 
rassment was so distressing that in pity Miss 
Ludington told Paul he might take her out for 
a walk in the dark. 

When they came back her cheeks were 
flushed as redly as when she went out; but, 
despite her shame, she looked very happy. 

” She is to be my wife in two weeks from to- 
day,*' said Paul, exultantly. 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


251 


'' I ought not to let him marry me. I know 
I ought not. I am not fit for him,” faltered 
Ida ; ” but I cannot refuse him anything, and I 
love him so ! ” 

"You are quite fit for him,” said Miss 
Ludington, kissing her, " and I can well believe 
he loves you. It would be strange, indeed, if 
he did not. You are a noble and a tender 
woman, and he will be very happy.” 

In the days that followed, Ida was at 
first much puzzled to account not only for 
the evident genuineness of the esteem which 
her friends cherished for her, but for the fact 
that it seemed to have been enhanced rather 
than diminished by the recent events. In- 
stead of regarding her repentance as at most 
offsetting her offence, they apparently looked 
upon it as a positive virtue redounding wholly 
to her credit. It was quite as if she had made 
amends for another person’s sin, in contrast 
with whose conduct her own nobility stood 
out in fine relief. 


252 


M/SS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


And that, in fact, is exactly the way t\iey 
did look at it. Their habit of distinguishing 
between the successive phases of an individ- 
ual life as distinct persons, made it impossi- 
ble for them to take any other view of the 
matter. 

In their eyes the past was good or bad for 
itself, and the present good or bad for itself, 
and an evil past could no more shadow a 
virtuous present than a virtuous present 
could retroact to brighten or redeem an ugly 
past. It is the soul that repents which is 
ennobled by repentance. The soul that did 
the deed repented of is past forgiving. There 
was no affectation on the part of Paul or 
Miss Ludington of ignoring the fraud which 
Ida had practised, or pretending to forget it. 
This was not necessary out of any considera- 
tion for her feelings, for they did not hold 
that it was she who was guilty of that fraud, 
but another person. 

As gradually she comprehended the way 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 


253 


in which they looked upon her, and came to 
perceive that they unquestioningly held that 
she had no responsibility for her past self, 
but was a new being, she was filled with a 
great exhilaration, the precise like of which 
was, perhaps, never before known to a repent- 
ant wrong-doer. As they believed, so would 
she believe. With a great joy she put the 
shameful past behind her and took up her 
new life. "As a man thinketh in his heart 
so is he.’’ 

If she had loved Paul before, if she had 
before felt tenderly toward Miss Ludington, 
a passion of gratitude now intensified her 
love, her tenderness, a thousand-fold. 

Miss Ludington’s failing health was the only 
shadow on the perfect happiness of the lovers 
during those two weeks of courtship. Com- 
pared with the intoxicating reality of these 
golden days Paul looked back on his wooing of 
the supposed Ida Ludington as a vague and 
unsatisfying dream. 


254 


MISS LUDINGTON*S SISTER, 


Now that Ida was no longer playing a part, 
he was really just becoming acquainted with 
her, and finding out what manner of maiden it 
was to whom he had lost his heart. Each day, 
almost each hour, discovered to him some new 
trait, some unsuspected grace of mind or heart, 
till, in this glowing girl, so bright, so blithe, so 
piquant, he had difficulty in recognizing any 
likenesss, save of face and form, to the moody, 
freakish, melancholy, hysterical, and altogether 
eerie Ida Ludington. 

” I am so glad,’* Miss Ludington said to her 
one day, ” that you are Ida Slater, and not my 
Ida." 

"Why are you glad?" Ida asked. "Would 
you not have been happier if you had gone on 
believing me to be your girlish self? " 

" I should have grown very sad by this time 
if I had continued to think that you were 
she?** replied Miss Ludington. "I have not 
long to live, and it is far more important to me 
that she should be there to welcome me when I 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


255 


go over than that I should have her here with 
me for a few days before I go. If she were 
here on earth the thought of so soon leaving 
her behind would sadden me as much as 
the hope of meeting her now gladdens 
me/' 

Miss Ludington neither talked herself nor 
permitted others to talk in a melancholy tone 
of the probable nearness of her end. ” Death 
may seem dreadful/' she said to Ida one day, ” to 
the foolish people who fancy that an individual 
dies but once, forgetting that their present selves 
are but the last of many selves already dead. 
The death which may now be near me is no 
sadder, no more important, than the deaths of 
my past selves, and no different, save in the 
single respect that this time no later self will fol- 
low me. This house of our individuality, which 
has sheltered us in turn, having become in- 
capable of being repaired for the use of 
subsequent tenants, is to be pulled down. 
That is all.’' 


256 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 

Another time she said, ” It is very strange to 
see people who dread death always looking 
forward for it instead of backward. In their 
fear of dying once they quite forget that they 
have died already many times. It is the most 
foolish of all things to imagine that by prolong- 
ing the career of the individual, death is kept at 
bay. The present self must die in any case by 
the inevitable process of time, whether the 
body be kept in repair for later selves or not. 
The death of the body is but the end of the 
daily dying that makes up earthly life.'' 

They were married in the sitting-room 
before the picture that had exerted so strong 
an influence upon their lives. The servants 
were invited in, but there was no company. 
Ida wore a white satin with a low corsage, and 
as she stood directly below the picture, the 
resemblance impressed the beholders very strik- 
ingly. It was as if the girl had stepped down 
from the picture to be married. 


MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER. 


257 


Ida had demurred a little to standing just 
there, which had been the suggestion of Miss 
Ludington. She was not without a vague 
superstition that the spirit of the girl whose 
lover she had stolen away would not wish her 
well. But when she hinted this, Miss Luding- 
ton replied, "You must not think of it that 
way. What has a spirit like her to do with 
earthly passions? Your love has saved Paul 
from a dream as vain as it was beautiful, and 
which, had it gone on, might have gained a 
morbid strength and blighted his life. I like to 
fancy, and I know it is Paul’s belief, that the 
spirit of my Ida influenced you to, come to us 
just as you came, that under her form Paul 
might fall in love with you. In no other way 
but just this do I believe he could have been 
cured of his infatuation.” 

Owing to the precarious condition of Miss 
Ludington’s health, Paul and Ida would not 
consent to leave home for any bridal trip. 


258 MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER, 


It was but a week after the wedding that, on 
going into Miss Ludington’s room as usual the 
first thing in the morning, Ida found her dead. 
She must have expired very quietly, if not, 
indeed, in her sleep, for her room adjoined 
that of the bridal couple, and she could have 
summoned Ida with the touch of a bell. Her 
features were relaxed in a smile of joyous 
recognition. 

Paul took his wife to Europe directly aftei 
the funeral. One night, during their absence, a 
fire, probably set by tramps, broke out in one 
of the empty houses of the village, and, the 
wind being high and no help near, all the 
buildings on the place, including the home- 
stead, were completely destroyed. The latter 
being shut up, nothing ev^en of the furniture 
could be saved, and the entire contents, in- 
cluding the picture in the sitting-room, were 
consumed. The tourists were much shocked 
by the receipt of the intelligence, but Paul 


MISS LUDINGTON^S SISTER, 259 

expressed the inmost conviction of both when 
he finally said, "Now that she is gone, per- 
haps it is as well. Ashes to ashes ! The past 
has claimed its own/' 

They never rebuilt the village or the home- 
stead, but on their return to this country took 
up their residence in New York. The site of 
the mimic Hilton is once more tilled as a 
farm. 

It is scarcely necessary to add that Ida made 
such provision for her family as enabled them 
to retire from the medium business. Paul 
insisted that this provision should be of the 
most generous nature, for was he not indebted 
to them for the happiness of his life? He 
never would admit that Mrs. Legrand was a 
fraud, but always maintained that none but 
a truly great medium could have materialized 
the vaguest of love-dreams into the sweetest 
of wives. 

As for Dr. Hull, or, rather, Mr. Slater, he 
became in time quite a crony of Paul's, and 


/ 


26o miss LUDINGTON^S sister. j\. 

the book on which the latter is engaged, 
setting forth the argument for the immortality 
of past selves, will owe not a little to the 
suggestions of the old gentleman. 


THE END. 





































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